EUROPEAN COMMISSION - EUROSTAT ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics 2010 project on statistical units n° Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics 1 Svetlana Jesiļevska – CSB (Latvia) ____________________________________________________________ ESSnet on Consistency – Project on Statistical Units – Workshop Riga 2012 Riga – 19th and 20th June 2012

2 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics Identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics falls under objective (b) of the WP1 ’Statistical units’ of the Project ‘ESSnet on consistency of concepts and methods of business-related statistics’ (in short: ESSnet on Consistency): Identification and evaluation of inconsistencies. Introduction

3 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics Statistical domains Structural Business Statistics Short-Term Statistics Prodcom Foreign-Affiliates Statistics Tourism Statistics Energy Statistics Environment Statistics (Waste Statistics; Environmental expenditure) Statistics on Information and Communication Technology External Trade Statistics Research and Development Employment statistics (Labour Force Survey; Structure of Earnings Survey/Labour Cost Survey; Job Vacancy Statistics; Labour Cost Index) Vocational Training Statistics Balance of Payments and Foreign Direct Investment National Accounts

4 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics The Statistical Unit Regulation (the Council Regulation (EEC) No 696/93) The Annex of the Council Regulation (EEC) No 696/93 of 15 March 1993 on the statistical units for the observation and analysis of the production system distinguishes and defines eight statistical units: A. the enterprise; B. the institutional unit; C. the enterprise group; D. the kind-of-activity unit (KAU); E. the unit of homogeneous production (UHP); F. the local unit; G. the local kind-of-activity unit (local KAU); H. the local unit of homogeneous production (local UHP).

5 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics … The Statistical Unit Regulation … continued … The use of common definitions of statistical units is a prerequisite to arrive at an integrated statistical information system. Not all statistics are based on the Council Regulation (EEC) No 696/93 on the statistical units for the observation and analysis of the production system in the Community (the Statistical Unit Regulation). Some statistical units are defined in other regulations and some are even not defined in any legal act.

6 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics Percentage of statistical domains according to type of statistical unit

7 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics Types of statistical units Units as defined in Regulation No 696/93, clear reference to Regulation No 696/93 Examples of Regulations with this approach: Structural Business Statistics Short-Term Statistics Sructure of Earnings Survey/Labour Cost Survey Prodcom Tourism Waste Statistics Vocational Training Statistics Statistics on Information and Communication technology Foreign-Affiliates Statistics Environmental expenditure

8 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics … Types of statistical units… continued … Units according to Regulation No 696/93, but exceptions and rather weak link to Regulation No 696/93 Examples of Regulations with this approach: Research and Development Innovation Energy Statistics Well defined specific units, without reference to Regulation 696/93 or with a very indirect reference Examples of Regulations with this approach: External Trade – Intrastat; Extrastat Balance of Payments Foreign Direct Investment Statistics National Accounts

9 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics … Types of statistical units… continued … Undefined units Examples of Regulations with this approach: Job Vacancy Statistics The compilation of statistics shall be based on business units, but no definition is given and any reference to Regulation No 696/93 is also missing. Labour Cost Index Regulation No 696/93 is quoted but there are no provisions which of the units have to be used. Labour Force Survey The individual person is the central statistical unit, regardless of whether the sampling unit is an individual or a household. Information usually has to be collected for all individuals of the household.

10 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics Statistical units in different statistical domains ‘Enteprise’ is the statistical unit in Business Register Structural Business Statistics Short-Term Statistics Foreign-Affiliates Statistics Energy Statistics Environmental expenditure Prodcom Statistics on Information and Communication technology Research and Development Innovation Structure of Earnings Survey/ Labour Cost Survey Vocational training

11 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics …Statistical units in different statistical domains… continued … ‘Local unit’ is the statistical unit in Business Register Structural Business Statistics Tourism Foreign-Affiliates Statistics Structure of Earnings Survey/ Labour Cost Survey Waste Statistics

12 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics …Statistical units in different statistical domains… continued … ‘Kind-of-activity unit’ is the statistical unit in Structural Business Statistics Waste Statistics Short-Term Statistics Local kind-of-activity unit’ is the statistical unit in ‘ Local kind-of-activity unit’ is the statistical unit in Tourism National Accounts

13 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics …Statistical units in different statistical domains… continued … Other statistical units Statistical domainStatistical unit Business Register‘Enterprise Group’ Structural Business Statistics‘business’ and ‘branch’ in Module V (Insurance); ‘credit institutions’ and ‘branches’ in Module VI (Credit institutions) Statistics on External Trade‘statistical unit’ means the basic observation unit, namely a natural person, a household, an economic operator and other undertakings referred to by the data (Regulation (EC) No 223/2009) Job Vacancy Statistics‘business unit’ National Accounts‘Institutional units’ Balance of Payments and Foreign Direct Investment‘Institutional units’ Labour Force Statistics‘individual’ or ‘household’ Labour Cost Indexthe LCI shall represent all the statistical units as defined in Council Regulation (EEC) No 696/93 (Regulation (EC) No 450/2003)

14 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 According to the Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009 on European statistics, Article 12 ‘Statistical quality’: To guarantee the quality of results, European statistics shall be developed, produced and disseminated on the basis of uniform standards and of harmonised methods. In this respect, the following quality criteria shall apply: (a) ‘relevance’; (b) ‘accuracy’; (c) ‘timeliness’; (d) ‘punctuality’; (e) ‘accessibility’ and ‘clarity’; (f) ‘comparability’; (g) ‘coherence’.

15 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics Clusters of survey-based statistics Cluster A: Economic Units/ Activity oriented Statistics The statistics usually address enterprises as respondents; the main variables primarily capture characteristics of the economic activities of these economic agents. The following statistical domains belong to this group: Structural Business Statistics and Business Demography; Short-Term Statistics (STS); Some of the variables covered by STS such as prices are rather commodity oriented and do not fit well into the cluster of activity oriented statistics; FATS; Tourism; Environmental expenditure; Statistics on Information and Communication Technology – Enterprises and the information society); Research and Development; Structure of Earnings Survey / Labour cost survey; Job Vacancy Statistics; Labour Cost Index; Vocational Training Statistics; FDI/International Trade in Services.

16 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics …Clusters of survey-based statistics… continued… Cluster B: Person/ Household oriented Statistics These statistics focus on persons and households as respondents and units of observation. The following statistical domains belong to this group: Tourism - Participation in tourism; Tourism – Data on trips; Statistics on Information and Communication Technology - Individuals, households and the information society; Labour Force Survey; Structure of Earnings Survey (to some extent, although also classified under Cluster A). Cluster C: Commodity oriented Statistics The scope of these statistics is always defined with reference to certain commodities. The following statistical domains belong to this group: Prodcom; Energy Statistics; Waste Statistics; External Trade.

17 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics To sum up… The legal acts and manuals governing the system of business-related statistics themselves belong to very different age groups. Great amount of legal acts and manuals has been reviewed. A comparison of all these legal acts and manuals on a bilateral basis is almost impossible. A lack of consistency with respect to the underlying statistical units will have serious consequences. The use of administrative data based on different statistical units than the units as laid down in the legal act will constrain the comparability between statistical results from different statistical domains.

18 ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics … To sum up… continued … The main inconsistency must be seen in the different statistical units on which the closely related projects are based. A number of statistical projects are not based on statistical units according to the Regulation No 696/93. The Regulation No 177/2008 does not require that all the statistical units distinguished in Regulation No 696/93 have to be included in the business registers for statistical purposes. There is an additional need for revising the Statistical Unit Regulation and the statistical units used due to changes.

19 Thanks for your attention! ESSnet on Consistency of Concepts and Methods of business-related Statistics. WP1 Statistical units Outline on identification and evaluation of inconsistencies in regulations for business related statistics