Summary
The term business demography is used to cover a set of variables which explain the characteristics and demography of the business population. The creation of new enterprises and the closure of unproductive ones are considered important indicators of the business dynamics.
There is a large demand for information on business demography both at national and international level. At European level, demands are for coherent and comparable data across the members of the European Statistical System (ESS). The European Commission, as key customer, has assured its commitment to a policy that promotes entrepreneurship as an essential instrument for improving competitiveness and generating economic growth and job opportunities since its communication to the Council on 'Promoting Entrepreneurship and Competitiveness'. The support of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial dynamics, the presence of which can be revealed by the analysis of business demography statistics over time. As a consequence, there is high demand for comparable data on business demography for the purposes of monitoring and policy formulation.
This module aims to provide theoretical guidance in the production of data on business demography. It has been developed taking Eurostat-OECD Manual on Business Demography Statistics into account, used in the EU business demography harmonised data collection.
After a short introduction on the importance to collect business demography data, in the second section we give a general description of two main topics: first we describe the methodology and indicators for business demography statistics such as: Enterprise Births, Enterprise Deaths and Surviving Enterprises; second we describe methodology and indicators for entrepreneurship such as: Employer Enterprise Births, Employer Enterprise Deaths, Employer Surviving Enterprises, High-Growth Enterprises and Gazelle Enterprises.
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