Sources of International Investment Data in the Integrated Data Infrastructure (WP 13/31)

Abstract

The Longitudinal Business Database (LBD) links together firm-level data held by Statistics New Zealand from a combination of administrative and survey data sources. This linking has opened up a wide range of research opportunities. In many cases, there are now multiple sources of information on a single area of firms' activities, often capturing different aspects or a different population, requiring a choice to be made about the most appropriate source of data for any given research question. This note outlines the available firm-level data sources for research on foreign direct investment, describes the data available, and sets out some of the opportunities and challenges for using these data for research purposes. It also provides detail on maintenance procedures for one of the core elements of the LBD, the Longitudinal Business Frame, which is applicable to a wide variety of firm-level research topics.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Geoff Mead, Ranjith Nanayakkara, Brian Torrey, Upul Paranawithana, Mark Gordon and Mike Faire for their assistance in understanding the intricacies of the data, and Richard Fabling, Hamish Hill, Talo Talosaga and James Beard for feedback on the paper. This paper was completed as part of the author's secondment to Statistics New Zealand.

Disclaimer

The views, opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Working Paper are strictly those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the New Zealand Treasury or the New Zealand Government. The New Zealand Treasury and the New Zealand Government take no responsibility for any errors or omissions in, or for the correctness of, the information contained in these working papers. The paper is presented not as policy, but with a view to inform and stimulate wider debate.

This paper was undertaken while the author was on secondment to Statistics New Zealand. The results in this paper are not official statistics, they have been created for research purposes from the Integrated Data Infrastructure prototype (IDI) managed by Statistics NZ. The opinions, findings, recommendations and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the author. Statistics NZ takes no responsibility for any omissions or errors in the information contained here.

Access to the data used in this study was provided by Statistics NZ in accordance with security and confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act 1975. Only people authorised by the Statistics Act 1975 are allowed to see data about a particular person, business or organisation. The results in this paper have been confidentialised to protect individual people and businesses from identification.

Careful consideration has been given to the privacy, security and confidentiality issues associated with using administrative data in the IDI. Further detail can be found in the Privacy Impact Assessment for the IDI available from www.stats.govt.nz.

The results are based in part on tax data supplied by Inland Revenue to Statistics NZ under the Tax Administration Act 1994. This tax data must be used only for statistical purposes, and no individual information may be published or disclosed in any other form, or provided to Inland Revenue for administrative or regulatory purposes. Any person who has had access to the unit-record data has certified that they have been shown, have read, and have understood section 81 of the Tax Administration Act 1994, which relates to privacy and confidentiality. Any discussion of data limitations or weaknesses is in the context of using the IDI for statistical purposes, and is not related to the data's ability to support Inland Revenue's core operational requirements.