Abstract
It is well-known that non-response affects the results of surveys and can even cause biases due to selectivities if it cannot be regarded as missing at random. In contrast to household surveys, response behaviour in business surveys is rarely examined in literature. This paper analyses a large business survey at a microdata level for unit non-response. The data base is the Ifo Business Survey, which was established in 1949 and is completed by more than 5000 firms every month. The panel structure makes it possible to use statistical modelling with the inclusion of different types of time dimensions, as well as firm-specific effects. The results show that there are strong time-dependent effects on the response rate and that non-response is more frequent in economic good times.
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Notes
More information to the definitions of unit and sectors in the official statistics can be found in the German Classification of Economic Activities (edition 2008): https://www.destatis.de/DE/Methoden/Klassifikationen/GueterWirtschaftklassifikationen/klassifikationwz2008_erl.pdf?__blob=publicationFile.
Official statistics in Germany does weight their results in the same way, e.g. for the production statistics in manufacturing.
We are aware of the fact that this kind of informative drop-out might have some effect on the results. However, the number of firms which declared to be no longer interested in survey participation is small (16) in contrast to the number of firms which were taken over or went bankrupt (1904) or for which no information was recorded (1781).
Notice that for the construction and manufacturing firms only the number of employees is available whereas for the trade firms only the annual sales volume is recorded.
For an discussion of the different panel data approaches see Gardiner et al. (2009).
Notice that these results are based on the evaluation of large firms.
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Seiler, C. The determinants of unit non-response in the Ifo Business Survey. AStA Wirtsch Sozialstat Arch 8, 161–177 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11943-014-0142-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11943-014-0142-9