The 7th Vintage of CompNet dataset represents an unbalanced panel dataset which covers 19 European countries. This provides researchers with a dataset for cross-country studies that includes a rich set of indicators from five different fields: productivity, finance, labour, competition and trade. CompNet variables and indicators are available for two samples: “full” and “20E”. The full sample intended to cover the period 1999-2016 for most of the countries in the sample. However, actual data availability reduces this time span to 2003-2015 for the majority of the participating countries. In some countries, firms are legally obliged to report their balance sheet data only when certain thresholds are met. For example, in Poland only firms with more than 10 employees have to report their accountings. To provide a more homogeneous sample across countries, CompNet therefore constructed also the 20E sample, including only firms that have at least 20 employees for the same time span.

In most cases, data rely on business registers of national banks or statistical offices, complemented with other firm-level sources, either to enrich firm coverage, or to include additional information, as, for instance, trade values. Across all countries, the target population of the firm-level datasets is narrowed down to consistently include non-financial corporations with employees. The country coverage of this vintage contains up to 19 countries, including the six biggest EU economies (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and Poland).

User guide for the 7th vintage of the CompNet dataset

Data provider collect firm-level information from balance sheet and administrative statistical registries. We run a harmonized protocol across each firm-level data set to construct our indicators.