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Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Principles - Methods and Techniques – Applications for the Production and Dissemination Università Europea di Roma- Via degli Aldobrandeschi, 190 00163 - Rome - I Archive and sampling information: is an integration possible? The case of the confidence survey on manufacturing Rome, April, 28-29 2011 Bianca M. Martelli, ISTAT Paola Maddalena Chiodini, University of Milano–Bicocca/ESeC; Giancarlo Manzi, Università degli studi di Milano/ESeC; Flavio Verrecchia , ISTAT/ESeC [email_address]

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Aims of the paper Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 <ul><li>To present the ISTAT Confidence Survey on manufacturing </li></ul><ul><li>Pointing out the improvements and the gains in quality achieved by using the ASIA archive at different steps of the survey setting up and conduction: </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Sampling frame </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Strata setting </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Changes in sectorial classification </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Validation of the sample allocation </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>The presentation does not cover all aspects of the survey but it will focus only on those areas which mainly profited from the availability of Asia archive </li></ul></ul>

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The confidence survey on manufacturing Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 <ul><li>Confidence can be defined as the (positive) attitude of economic agents toward both firms’ (internal) and country’s (external) variables </li></ul><ul><li> </li></ul><ul><li>The manufacturing confidence survey aims to investigate the confidence of the economic operators by asking entrepreneurs and managers about: </li></ul><ul><ul><li>current trends and expectations for the near future, </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>both their own business and the general situation of the economy </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Information collected is of a qualitative type with a three-option ordinal scale (e.g. high, normal, low) </li></ul>

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Confidence surveys : History (1/2) Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 <ul><li>The manufacturing confidence survey is part of the larger project of Business and Consumer Tendency Surveys (BCS) which comprises both firms (construction, manufacturing, retail trade, and services) and consumer </li></ul><ul><li>The manufacturing confidence survey for Italy was born in 1959 and became part of the European Harmonised project in 1962 </li></ul><ul><li>The survey was initially conceived mainly as a purposive panel among managers (seen as “expert witnesses”) </li></ul><ul><li>Firms information were collected according to a very detailed breakdown of Nace 70 classification </li></ul><ul><li>Over the years (ISCO and then ISAE and now) ISTAT has been developing its Business and Consumer Tendency Survey (BCS) survey in order to better match the methodological developments of sampling theory (European Commission, 2006; Malgarini, Margani, Martelli 2005) </li></ul>

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Confidence Surveys: History (2/2) Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 <ul><li>In 1986 a first deep revision took place by introducing as stratification variable also 19 Nuts-2 areas </li></ul><ul><li>Since 1998 the BTS has a stratified sampling design (22 Nace Rev.1 macro sectors; 3 firm sizes and 19 Nuts-2 areas) </li></ul><ul><li>Allocation: univariate Neyman x-optimal allocation, based on workforce variance estimated from previous waves of the survey itself; from 1999 onwards variances are calculated from the frame (see below) </li></ul><ul><li>In 2002 the processing procedure was completely revised introducing a weighting system based on stratum workforce </li></ul><ul><li>In May 2010, following up the European Commission request , data were re-classified according to Nace Rev.2 classification </li></ul>

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ASIA Archive Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 <ul><li>The ASIA archive (Statistical Archive of Active Firms) is set up and yearly updated by the Italian National Statistical Institute by merging some main administrative archives, mainly those of the Economy Department, Chamber of Commerce, Social Security (INPS), and Phone Company (Telecom) (ISTAT, 2010) </li></ul><ul><li>ASIA archive represents a complete and updated register of the Italian firms’ universe </li></ul><ul><li>It was firstly made available to user in 1999 alongside with the outcomes of the 1996 Intermediate Census of Industry and Services </li></ul>

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1 – ASIA as sampling frame Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 <ul><li>Pros: </li></ul><ul><li>With ASIA are now avoided drawbacks from former registers like: </li></ul><ul><ul><li>under-coverage problems arising when some units are mistakenly excluded from the list (partial frame lists) </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>or multiplicity problems occurring when a target unit is included k times in the frame </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Cons: </li></ul></ul><ul><li>A remarkable time lag persists as Asia is disseminated around one year and six months after the information is collected </li></ul>

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2 – ASIA as tool for s trata setting Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 <ul><li>Pros: </li></ul><ul><li>The information offered by ASIA is an optimal pre-condition for selecting units for the strata, giving a thoroughly information of them </li></ul><ul><li>The availability of ASIA allowed for the use of the Neyman allocation to strata weighted with the real variances, as opposed to variances estimated from the survey itself (as it was customary in first attempts) </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Cons: </li></ul></ul><ul><li>Asia can not overcome the fact that the strata bounds definition usually relies on official classification and administrative settings (classifications of economic activities, areas, etc.) and it is likely affected by between-strata heterogeneity (in terms of population size and stratum variance) </li></ul>

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3 - ASIA as a tool for supporting classification changes Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 <ul><li>On May 2010, the European Commission set the deadline to have all the BCS classified according to the Nace Rev.2 classification (Eurostat, 2006) </li></ul><ul><li>To this purpose, the Asia archive played a determinant role by offering in 2007 a double classification for each firm according both to the old Nace rev.1 (Ateco 2002) and Nace Rev.2 (Ateco 2007). This occurrence allowed: </li></ul><ul><ul><li>the careful imputation of the economic sector at micro (firm)-level backward up to January 2000 </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>the estimation of value added weights in territorial and dimensional breakdown using the ASIA information on workforce. These weights were useful for backward reconstruction at macro (sectorial-level) before 2000 </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>the revision of the sample strata and units’ allocation of the survey </li></ul></ul>

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4 - ASIA as a tool for validation of the sample allocation Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 <ul><li>Confidence surveys do not have a benchmark in universe to validate the outcomes, the only possible strategy is offered by simulation tools </li></ul><ul><li>The availability of the ASIA archive allowed the setting of a new simulation method: the Sequential Selection-Allocation (SSA) (Chiodini et al. 2010a and 2010b) </li></ul><ul><ul><li>Identify the units in ASIA belonging to each strata; a ssign a random number to each unit in each stratum </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>In each stratum rank the units in ascending order according to the assigned r.n </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Allocate the units according to the allocation methods selected starting from the first positions </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Calculate the statistics of interest, obtaining a replicate </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Repeat steps a)-d) until the desired number of replications is reached </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Calculate the statistics chosen for comparison (RMSE, RRMSE, RTE etc. ) </li></ul></ul>

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4 - ASIA as a tool for validation of the sample allocation: Simulation Device Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 PROPORTIONAL UNIFORM NEYMAN/ISAE ROAUST ISAE (BOUNDED) PROPORTIONAL UNIFORM NEYMAN/ISAE ROAUST Start End SSA (Replicates list with units strata ranked by selection order) Choice of allocation methods PROPORTIONAL NEYMAN/ISAE ROAUST UNIFORM BENCHMARK Sample replicates data marts Frame List by strata … NEYMAN/BETHEL … ISAE (BOUNDED) NEYMAN/BETHEL

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4 - ASIA as a tool for validation of the sample allocation: simulation on total Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 Distributions of replicates (1,000):

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4 - ASIA as a tool for validation of the sample allocation: stratum error Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 <ul><ul><ul><li>Relative Total Error: </li></ul></ul></ul>where ( is the population mean and is the replication mean), and is the standard error of the replicates |RTE| by stratum

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ASIA - Sample interaction process Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 Firms Sources Users Data collection Output Sample estimates Sampling methods and data Administrative archives Census information Statistical archive ASIA Simulations

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Archive and sampling information: is an integration possible? The case of the confidence survey on manufacturing <ul><li>Conclusions </li></ul><ul><li>The Confidence survey on manufacturing takes great advantage of ASIA availability at different steps of survey design. Namely: </li></ul><ul><ul><li>The survey benefits of a complete sampling frame </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Strata can be better evaluated and defined </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>Updates in sectoral classification have been handled in reliable way </li></ul></ul><ul><ul><li>As a benchmark for confidence does not exists, ASIA allows to apply simulation techniques as validation tool of sample allocations. An original technique was presented </li></ul></ul>Rome, April 28-29, 2011

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References Enhancement and Social Responsibility of Official Statistics Rome, April, 28-29 2011 <ul><li>Chiodini, P.M., Manzi, G., Martelli, B.M, Verrecchia, F.: The ISAE Manufacturing Survey Sample: Validating the Nace Rev.2 Sectorial Allocation, paper presented at 30th CIRET Conference, New York, October, 13-16 (2010b) </li></ul><ul><li>Chiodini, P.M., Lima, R., Manzi, G., Martelli B.M, Verrecchia, F.: Criticalities in Applying the Neyman’s Optimality in Business Surveys: a Comparison of Selected Allocation Methods. In: Wywiał, J. & Gamrot, W. (Eds.) Survey Sampling Methods in Economic and Social Research, pp. 42-77. Katowice University of Economics Publishing Office, Poland (2010c) </li></ul><ul><li>European Commission: The Joint Harmonised EU Programme of Business and Consumer Surveys. In: European Economy, Special Report No. 5, Bruxelles (2006) </li></ul><ul><li>Eurostat (Taskforce on the implementation of NACE Rev.2): Handbook on methodological aspects related to sampling designs and weights estimations, Version 1.0. (2006) </li></ul><ul><li>ISTAT: Struttura e dimensione delle imprese Archivio Statistico delle Imprese Attive (Asia), Anno 2008, Rome (2010) </li></ul><ul><li>Malgarini, M., Margani, P., Martelli, B.M.: New design of the ISAE Manufacturing Survey. In: JBCMA, vol.2, No.1, pp. 125-142. OECD, Paris (2005) </li></ul><ul><li>Martini, M.: Necessità e possibilità di un registro statistico delle imprese in Italia, in: Martini, M. & Biffignandi, S. (Eds.) Il registro statistico europeo delle imprese. Franco Angeli, Milan (1995) </li></ul><ul><li>Martini, M.: La Statistica. In: Studi in Ricordo di Martini, pp. 1-10. Giuffrè, Milan (2004) </li></ul>