The Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys ( German : Joint Harmonized EU Program for business and consumer ) is a system of business surveys that in all EU Member States and candidate countries is carried out. The program generates and provides standardized indicators of economic development across Europe that are used to monitor economic development, for short-term economic forecasts and economic research. They are widely used to identify turning points in the business cycle and form a supplement to official business statistics, which are only available much later.

Subject of the program

The European Union encourages business and consumer surveys to be carried out in its Member States and candidate countries. The funded institutions undertake to carry out monthly surveys in defined economic sectors or among consumers using a specified, harmonized questionnaire and to make the results available to the European Union. The program is implemented by the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) of the European Commission .

Economic sectors covered and sample size

The business and consumer surveys of the Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys are carried out in the following economic sectors; the exact sector definition and the approximate sample size for the entire EU are given in brackets.

  • Manufacturing ( NACE 10-33; 40,510 companies per month)
  • Construction (NACE 41-43, 22,934 companies per month)
  • Retail (NACE 45 + 47, 31,441 businesses per month)
  • Services (NACE 49-96, 45,989 businesses per month)
  • Financial sector (NACE 64-66, 1,000 companies per month)
  • Consumers (41,060 households per month)
  • Investment Survey in Manufacturing (NACE 10-33, 47,441 per half-year)

Question program

The questionnaire of the Joint EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys was developed together with the OECD and, as usual for business surveys , consists of questions about economic development in the recent past, the current economic situation and the expectations of the companies and consumers surveyed for the future Months that can be answered using simple 3-step (company) or 5-step (consumer) scales. Typical examples of such questions are:

  • How has the production activity of your company developed in the last three months? Increased / stayed about the same / decreased
  • What is your company's current order backlog? More than sufficient / sufficient / insufficient
  • How will your company's production activities develop in the next three months? Rise / stay about the same / sink

In addition, there are also isolated questions about quantitative parameters, such as capacity utilization in percent or consumer inflation expectations in percent. But these are an exception. Only the investment survey in manufacturing consists to a large extent of quantitative questions.

The entire questionnaire of the Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys is listed in its User Guide . The implementation based on questionnaires in the individual member states of the EU and the candidate countries by the respective institutes can be viewed on the program's website.

methodology

The Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys specifies a harmonized set of questions that participating institutions must include in their questionnaire, as well as a common schedule for conducting the surveys and submitting the results to the European Commission . In addition, there are no strict requirements for the sampling and survey methodology for the individual institutions, so that there are strong differences between the surveys in the individual member states and candidate countries. However, that has General for Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission , which carries out the program, in 2014 a list of recommendations for the implementation of business and consumer surveys published ( "best practices"). Description of the methods used in the individual surveys in the EU member states and candidate countries can be viewed on the program's website.

Data access

From the results of the individual surveys, which are transmitted by the institutions of the European Commission participating in the Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys , the European Commission primarily calculates so-called "composite indicators" on the business cycle: For the individual economic segments "Confidence indicators " are calculated, from these in turn the Economic Sentiment Indicator (ESI). These indicators form the basis of the European Commission's monthly press releases on the results of the business and consumer surveys

On the program's website, the data of the business and consumer surveys are freely accessible ( seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted) for the European Union , the euro zone and the individual member states of the EU and the candidate countries as a whole and for the individual economic sectors and also for the individual subsectors in usually NACE 2-digit code. The results can also be called up from Eurostat and via the OECD's Monthly Economic Indicators (MEI) .

Historical development and legal basis

The Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys was initiated by a decision of the European Commission on November 15, 1961. The harmonized surveys began in 1962 with the manufacturing of goods. In 1966 the harmonized survey in the construction industry and the survey on investment plans in the manufacturing of goods followed. A harmonized consumer survey has existed since 1972, followed by retail trade in 1984 and the service sector in 1996. Since 2007, the European Commission has also carried out a survey of the financial sector at EU and Eurozone level. This is the only one of the surveys that is carried out centrally, while all the others are carried out by partner institutions in the respective EU member states and candidate countries.

According to the User Guide, the legal basis of the Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys is a decision of the Commission of the European Economic Community from November 1961. The program was later modified by several decisions by the Commission and the European Council and most recently by Commission Decision C (97) 2241 dated July 15, 1997. Changes in the implementation of the program in terms of the use of the data collected, the methodology and the coverage were set out in the following communications from the Commission: COM (2000) 770 of November 29, 2000, COM (2006) 379 of July 12, 2006, SEC (2012) 227 of April 4, 2012 and C (2016) 6634 of October 20, 2016.

Funding volume

Funding under the Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys amounts to a maximum of 50% of the total costs of a funded survey. This is intended to cover the costs that the participating institutions incur as a result of adopting the harmonized survey methodology. In 2017, 50 institutions were funded with a total of € 5.4 million; the amount of individual funding was between € 281,929 and € 2,714.

Funded institutions

The institutions that are funded by the Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys are non-university research institutions ( e.g. Ifo and WIFO ), statistical offices (e.g. INSEE ), national banks (e.g. Banque Nationale de Belgique ) , Interest groups (e.g. Confederation of Finnish Industries ), commercial market research companies ( e.g. Gfk and Ipsos ) and universities ( University of Cyprus ).

Evaluation 2011/2012

The Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys was commissioned by the European Commission in 2011 and 2012 by a consortium consisting of Ghk Consulting Ltd. and the DIW Berlin evaluated. The evaluation showed that the results of business and consumer surveys carried out under the program are regularly incorporated into business policy-making and decision-making processes. Numerous Directorates General of the European Commission including Eurostat , the European Central Bank, the OECD , national banks, ministries and their departments, research institutions and science, companies and their interest groups such as chambers of commerce, private research institutions, financial institutions and the media are named as users of the data . The spectrum of data usage ranges from an overview of the current economy to sophisticated applications such as economic forecasts , economic nowcasting and the analysis of the business cycle.

various

The Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission is the implementing organization of the Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys member of the Center for International Research on Economic Tendency Surveys (CIRET).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f European Commission Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (Ed.): The Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys - User Guide ( Memento of May 27, 2019 on WebCite ) . Brussels January 2019 (English, europa.eu [PDF; accessed on May 27, 2019]).
  2. ↑ Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (Ed.): Business Tendency Surveys - A Handbook ( Memento June 3, 2019 on WebCite ) . Paris 2003 (English, oecd.org [PDF; accessed June 3, 2019]).
  3. ↑ https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/indicators-statistics/economic-databases/business-and-consumer-surveys/methodology-business-and-consumer-surveys/national-questionnaires_en National questionnaires
  4. ↑ European Commission - General Directorate for Economic Affairs and Finance (Ed.): List of 'best practice' for the conduct of business and consumer surveys ( Memento from June 3, 2019 on WebCite ) . Brussels 2014 (English, europa.eu [PDF; accessed on June 3, 2019]).
  5. ↑ https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/indicators-statistics/economic-databases/business-and-consumer-surveys/methodology-business-and-consumer-surveys/metadata-partner-institutes_en Metadata of partner institutes
  6. ↑ a b c https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/indicators-statistics/economic-databases/business-and-consumer-surveys/download-business-and-consumer-survey-data/ press-releases_en Press releases
  7. ↑ https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/euro-indicators/business-and-consumer-surveys Eurostat: Business and Consumer Surveys
  8. ↑ https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=MEI_BTS_COS Business surveys in the MEI database of the OECD
  9. ^ Financial Transparency System. European Commission, accessed on May 24, 2019 (English, reporting year: 2017, search term: "JOINT HARMONIZED EU PROGRAMS OF BUSINESS AND CONSUMER SURVEYS").
  10. ↑ Ghk Consulting Ltd, DIW Berlin (ed.): Final Report - Evaluation of the Joint Harmonized EU Program of Business and Consumer Surveys ( Memento from June 3, 2019 on WebCite ) . Specific Contract No. ECFIN - 167 - 2011 / SI2.597083 implementing Framework Contract DG ECFIN No ECFIN - 005 - 2011 / LOT NO. January 1st, 24th 2012 (English, europa.eu [PDF; accessed June 3rd, 2019]).