Analysis of accounting data from the explanatory notes to the financial statements for the estimation of the enterprises investments

Abstract

The Italian national institute of statistics (Istat) produces estimates on the main economic variables of enterprises, both from a Structural Business Statistics (SBS) and a National Accounts (NA) perspective. The two production processes present similarities and discrepancies. Both processes use survey data and administrative data. Survey data are collected through the Business Account Survey, divided into the Large Enterprises (LE) census survey on all enterprises with 250 employees and over, and the Small and Medium sized Enterprise (SME) survey on a sample of enterprises with less than 250 employees. Administrative data come from different sources and are used in different steps of the estimation process. Among the administrative sources, the Financial Statements of enterprises represents one of the most important, including a very rich source of information: beside filling in the accounting forms, firms report Explanatory Notes that include a summary of significant accounting policies and details of the reported values in their financial statement and clarifications on the economic situation of the company. As far the production process of estimates on “acquisitions of fixed assets” during the year, also known as “enterprise investments”, both SBS and NA processes use survey data, but only NA process also uses administrative information. The aim of the present work is to evaluate the content of the information on Investments, at the level of the legal unit, from the administrative source of the Explanatory Notes, beside the administrative sources already used in Istat processes. This work represents an exploratory and study phase to evaluate the usability of this source in the production processes of Investments of both SBS and NA. Possible future implications may be the inclusion of the Investment variable in the Extended Register of the main economic variables of enterprises, representing an object of the Istat integrated system of registers.