Business Microdata in Germany: Linkage and Anonymisation

Abstract

Scientists increasingly express the desire to use official statistics microdata for their own empirical economic and social research. In Germany, the road prescribed by the legislator is that microdata should be converted into a so called “factually” anonymised form, before they are made available to scientists. Accordingly, data items are regarded as sufficiently anonymised, if the expenditure needed for a possible reallocation is unreasonably high.