Online Program

The impact of globalisation on the system of statistical units
*Jean Ritzen, Statistics Netherlands 


Keywords: Statistical units, Business register, globalisation, consistency

Statistical units have an important function in the processing of statistics. The United Nations and the European Union developed systems of these units, which are not fully comparible. The EU-system of statistical units is lead down in a special regulation: Regulation Nr. 696/93 of March 15, 1993. The economic world has heavily changed since then. Globalisation has influenced the way enterprises carry out activities and organise themselves. This applies large and complex multinational groups especially. For these it is supposed that the defined statistical units are not longer fully applicable as a basis for data collection and data processing into comparable statistical figures. Because of the worldwide scope, tuning of the several systems needs attention too. It is becoming common sense that profiling of large MNE’s into adequate statistical units needs reconsideration of the systems. The paper will focus on the main issues and questions and will discuss the direction for solutions. This will be done in the context of the ESSnet on profiling large and complex MNE’s, that has started in 2009. The main purposes of the ESSnet are the quality improvement of statistics, including the increase of efficiency of the statistical processes.