1. The statistical units’ definition and implementation as core element to guarantee the ESS’ consistency Giuseppe Garofalo (ISTAT – Italy) Q 2014 - Special Session: Consistency of Concepts and Applied Methods in Business Statistics Vienna - 3 June 2014

2. Source: OECD – Entrepreneurship at a Glance – 2013. Figure 2.11. Productivity level by enterprise size class, total economy Thousands of US dollars per employee, 2010

3. Source: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/european_business/data/main_tables ItalyGermany United Kingdom 100 57 44 N. of enterprises 100 97 82 Val. Added / Pers. employed LeU = Ent ProfilingLeU = Ent Tr. turnover => Half time employee’ remuneration Tr. 17.500 euros Tr. 73.000 pounds no S13 IUs yes S13 IUs ? S13 IUs

4. IT UK 100 95 Val. Added / Pers. employed Tr = 73.000 pounds Tr = 17.500 euros 90 100 IT DE Use of different thresholds to identify the population of Italian enterprises

5. Coherence between DB and SBS data N. of countries by classes of differences DifferencesN. of enterprisesN. of persons employed 1316 0.95 – 1.0569 0.90 – 1.105- 0.80 – 1.205- 1.206- 35 % of the total EU’ ENTs 44 % of the total EU’ per. employed Source: SBS Steering Group – April 2014

6. Coherence vs Consistency Coherence: the extent to which differences between statistics can be attributed only to differences between to the true values of the characteristics they estimate Country b Country a Time t Time t +1 Region Nation Europe Monthly Quarterly Yearly Variable from domain a Variable from domain b domain a domain b domain c Consistency: correspondence and uniformity among the parts of a complex system. Outputs of the statistics Processes of the statistics

7. Coherence, consistency and the statistical business domains Financial domains Commodity domains Innovation domains Employments domains SBS STS – turn. STS – price R&D Fats Ext. Trade FDI Prodcom STS – prod. Tourism Energy ICT LCS SES JVS Demography Coherence Vertical Consistency Time Consistency Time Consistency Horizontal consistency Nat. ACC

8. The role of the Statistical Unit – present situation ESSnet on consistency of concepts and methods of business-related statistics – 2010 project on statistical units: Deliverable 1.1: Direction Report (by Norbert Rainer – STAT Austria). Deliverable 3.1: Identification and evaluation of business statistics regulations inconsistency (by Sarmite Prole and Svetlana Jesilevska - CSB Latvia). Deliverable 3.2 part 1 and 2: Identification and evaluation of Member States inconsistency (by Monica Consalvi and Danila Filipponi - ISTAT Italy, Joseph Keating - CSO Ireland, Pierrette Schulz and Sylvie Mabile - INSEE France, Sarmite Prole and Svetlana Jesilevska - CSB Latvia, Kerstin Gruber - STAT Austria) It is well accepted the necessity to overcome the identified limitations and contradictions of the Regulation 696/93 and the need to increase the coherence of the European economic figures and to build consistent statistics. Must be understood as to avoid the risk of falling back into the same limitations and contradictions

9. A consistent definition of a Statistical Unit. The route 1.The willingness component reduction of the “power” (needs) of the individual parts (each NSI, each domain) to guarantee an homogeneous “government of the system”. 2.The semantic component identification of the context, objective and scope NationalEuropean/global and/or Competiveness profitability productivity or Physical production Different contents of statistical unit definition Different level and typology of coherence and consistency Different “degree of rigor” in the application of the definition for various subpopulations

10. A consistent definition of a Statistical Unit. The route 3.The syntactic component. describes how a definition should be built a)Not permitting the deduction of a contradictions from the different part of the definition b)Do not use duplication of concepts c) Do not use generic concepts not well explained d)Do not use verbs that allow a “free” interpretation sells in its own will… which will? legal, economic, of ownership? …can be constituted by one legal unit, a combination of legal units or of parts of legal units…… ……………………… can correspond to a single legal unit…, an enterprise group…, or …part of an enterprise group……. 4.The semiotics component. Identifies clarifications and specifications for the practical and homogeneous implementation of the definition.