Documents de travail de l'OCDE sur la science, la technologie et l'industrie
- Forthcoming titles
- ISSN : 18151965 (en ligne)
- https://doi.org/10.1787/18151965
Coverage and representativeness of Orbis data
This paper describes the coverage and representativeness of Orbis, a commercial database of firm-level records across many countries. Such databases can provide key insights into global economic trends and shed light on how policies affect firms within and across countries. As a benchmark, the paper uses industry-level data from the OECD STAN dataset as well as micro-aggregated data from the OECD MultiProd and DynEmp projects, which draw on official microdata representative of the entire firm population. Results indicate that Orbis is more suitable for studies that: i) take a global perspective rather than make comparisons across countries; ii) analyse top performers and multinationals rather than underperforming firms; and iii) focus on mean performance or changes within firms rather than the entire firm distribution or entry and exit.