TY  - GEN
AB  - This paper examines the reliability of survey data on business incomes, valuations, and rates of return, which are key inputs for studies of wealth inequality and entrepreneurial choice. We compare survey responses of business owners with available data from administrative tax records, brokered private business sales, and publicly traded company filings and document problems due to nonrepresentative samples and measurement errors across several surveys, subsamples, and years. We find that the discrepancies are economically relevant for the statistics of interest. We investigate reasons for these discrepancies and propose corrections for future survey designs. <p> <p> Data and code for peer-reviewed article published in American Economic Review.
AD  - University of Minnesota
AD  - Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
AD  - University of Minnesota
AD  - Bank of Canada
AU  - Bhandari, Anmol
AU  - Birinci, Serdar
AU  - McGrattan, Ellen
AU  - See, Kurt
DA  - 2020-11-23
DO  - 10.3886/E117021V4
DO  - DOI
ID  - 4229
LA  - eng
N2  - This paper examines the reliability of survey data on business incomes, valuations, and rates of return, which are key inputs for studies of wealth inequality and entrepreneurial choice. We compare survey responses of business owners with available data from administrative tax records, brokered private business sales, and publicly traded company filings and document problems due to nonrepresentative samples and measurement errors across several surveys, subsamples, and years. We find that the discrepancies are economically relevant for the statistics of interest. We investigate reasons for these discrepancies and propose corrections for future survey designs. <p> <p> Data and code for peer-reviewed article published in American Economic Review.
PB  - American Economic Association
PY  - 2020-11-23
T1  - Data and Code for: What Do Survey Data Tell Us about US Businesses?
TI  - Data and Code for: What Do Survey Data Tell Us about US Businesses?
Y1  - 2020-11-23
ER  -