Improvements and Future Challenges for the Research Infrastructure: Firm Level Data

This article discusses the use of enterprise- and establishment-level data from official statistics to document stylized facts, to motivate assumptions used in formal theoretical models, to test hypotheses derived from theoretical models, and to evaluate policy measures. It shows how these data can be accessed by researchers in Germany today and reports on recent developments that will offer new and improved datasets that combine data collected in separate surveys and by different agencies. The paper makes three recommendations for future developments in this area: (1) change the law to make the combination of data collected by different producers easier, (2) combine firm-level data across national borders and make these data available for researchers, and (3) find ways to enable researchers in Germany to work with confidential firm-level data via remote access 24 hours a day and 365 days per year.