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Applying Data Synthesis for Longitudinal Business Data across Three Countries

M. Jahangir Alam, Benoit Dostie, Jörg Drechsler, Lars Vilhuber

arXiv 25 Jul 2020 · Econometrics · 1 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:2008.02246 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Data on businesses collected by statistical agencies are challenging to protect. Many businesses have unique characteristics, and distributions of employment, sales, and profits are highly skewed. Attackers wishing to conduct identification attacks often have access to much more information than for any individual. As a consequence, most disclosure avoidance mechanisms fail to strike an acceptable balance between usefulness and confidentiality protection. Detailed aggregate statistics by geography or detailed industry classes are rare, public-use microdata on businesses are virtually inexistant, and access to confidential microdata can be burdensome. Synthetic microdata have been proposed as a secure mechanism to publish microdata, as part of a broader discussion of how to provide broader access to such data sets to researchers. In this article, we document an experiment to create analytically valid synthetic data, using the exact same model and methods previously employed for the United States, for data from two different countries: Canada (LEAP) and Germany (BHP). We assess utility and protection, and provide an assessment of the feasibility of extending such an approach in a cost-effective way to other data.

Citation extraction

55
references
84
in-text mentions
55
distinct cited
14
self-citations
9,012
main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 84% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Kinney, Satkartar K., Reiter, Jerome P., Reznek, Arnold P., Miranda,… (2011) Towards Unrestricted Public Use Business Microdata: The Synthetic Longitudinal Business Database1.00054100%
2Snoke, Joshua, Raab, Gillian M., Nowok, Beata, Dibben, Chris, Slavko… (2018) General and specific utility measures for synthetic data0.87452100%
3Woo, Mi-Ja, Reiter, Jerome P., Oganian, Anna, Karr, Alan F (2009) Global Measures of Data Utility for Microdata Masked for Disclosure Limitation0.81142100%
4Kinney, Satkartar K., Reiter, Jerome P., Reznek, Arnold P., Miranda,… (2011) LBD Synthesis Procedures0.73732100%
5Arellano, Manuel, Bond, Stephen (1991) Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations0.69351100%
6Abowd, John M., Vilhuber, Lars (2010) VirtualRDC - Synthetic Data Server self0.64422100%
7Nowok, Beata, Raab, Gillian, Dibben, Chris (2016) synthpop: Bespoke Creation of Synthetic Data in R0.64422100%
8Kinney, Satkartar K., Reiter, Jerome P., Miranda, Javier (2014) Improving The Synthetic Longitudinal Business Database0.58531100%
9Hethey, Tanja, Schmieder, Johannes F (2010) Using worker flows in the analysis of establishment turnover: Evidence from German administrative data0.58531100%
10Benedetto, Gary, Haltiwanger, John, Lane, Julia, McKinney, Kevin (2007) Using Worker Flows in the Analysis of the Firm0.51121100%

Showing the top 10 of 55 scored citations.