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Data and Code for: What Do Survey Data Tell Us about US Businesses?

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Anmol Bhandari, University of Minnesota; Serdar Birinci, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; Ellen R. McGrattan, University of Minnesota; Kurt See, Bank of Canada

Version: View help for Version V2

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
AERIReplicationFolder			03/03/2020 09:42:AM

Project Citation:

Bhandari, Anmol, Birinci, Serdar, McGrattan, Ellen R., and See, Kurt. Data and Code for: What Do Survey Data Tell Us about US Businesses? Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2020. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-03-03. https://doi.org/10.3886/E117021V2

Project Description

Summary: This paper examines the reliability of survey data on business incomes, valuations, and rates of return, which are key inputs for studies of wealth inequality and entrepreneurial choice. We compare survey responses of business owners with available data from administrative tax records, brokered private business sales, and publicly traded company filings and document problems due to nonrepresentative samples and measurement errors across several surveys, subsamples, and years. We find that the discrepancies are economically relevant for the statistics of interest. We investigate reasons for these discrepancies and propose corrections for future survey designs.

Funding Sources: National Science Foundation (1657891); Heller Hurwicz Economics Institute

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Survey data; business incomes; valuations; intangibles; taxes

JEL Classification:
      C83 Survey Methods; Sampling Methods
      E22 Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity
      H25 Business Taxes and Subsidies including sales and value-added (VAT)

Geographic Coverage: United States

Time Period(s): 1988 – 2016

Universe: All US businesses

Data Type(s): administrative records data; survey data

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