Analyzing entrepreneurship with the Finnish Linked Employer-Employee Data (FLEED): Matching and qualitative properties of the data

This paper explores the potential of the Finnish Longitudinal Employer-Employee Data (FLEED) in the analysis of entrepreneurship. It is found that these data are excellent for analyzing a certain sort of self-employed individuals who exercise their profession on their own account (elinkeinonharjoittajat). In these cases, where the company can be identified on the basis of the personal code of the self-employed, it is possible to see both sides of the self-employed, their individual characteristics and the properties their companies. On the other hand, the present data do not allow linking the limited liability companies to their owner entrepreneurs directly, which currently seriously limits the usefulness of the data for entrepreneurial analysis. Two possibilities to improve the situation are considered. Firstly, the self-employed can be matched to their companies by using background information of the self-employed and the companies. Our experiment shows, however, that relatively reliable matches can be found only for a rather small sample of the self-employed. A much more promising but more expensive option might be to use taxation registers on the ownership compiled by the taxation authorities. Linking individuals with companies on the basis of the ownership would open a great variety of interesting research opportunities. – Data ; self-employment ; entrepreneurs