How to Construct Nationally Representative Firm-Level Data from the Orbis Global Database: New Facts on SMEs and Aggregate Implications for Industry Concentration

A-Tier
Journal: American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
Year: 2024
Volume: 16
Issue: 2
Pages: 353-74

Authors (5)

Şebnem Kalemli- Özcan (not in RePEc) Bent E. Sørensen (not in RePEc) Carolina Villegas-Sanchez (not in RePEc) Vadym Volosovych (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam) Sevcan Yeşiltaş (Koç Üniversitesi)

Score contribution per author:

0.804 = (α=2.01 / 5 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We construct nationally representative firm-level longitudinal data for European countries using financial statements from the Orbis database. We validate our data by comparing its coverage and firm size distribution to official statistics. We showcase two applications to show the importance of firm representativeness in understanding macroeconomic outcomes. First, we show that small and medium-sized firms account for a large share of aggregate economic activity. Second, we document that firm representativeness is important for calculating industry concentration trends over time as the share of economic activity accounted by top firms in an industry changes with the firm samples used.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:aea:aejmac:v:16:y:2024:i:2:p:353-74
Journal Field
Macro
Author Count
5
Added to Database
2026-01-29