Business Registry Research Articles

From the paper age to the electronic age: an electronic business registry reform in Ecuador

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the short- and long-run effects of implementing an electronic business registry in Ecuador in September, 2014. Using a regression discontinuity in time (RDiT) design jointly with official administrative data, I find an increase in the short-run in the number of new formal firms that ranges from 14% to 18% depending on the outcome studied. In the long-run, the policy implementation increases the number of new formal firms by around 27%. For the entry rate outcome, the results are similar but in less magnitude. In particular, the impact of the policy implementation increases the entry rate by 9.10% in the short-run and 0.91% in the long-run. Overall, this paper supports the idea that reducing red tape and applying new technologies in business registries increase firm entry into the formal economy.

Analysis of the Effect of the Tax Electronic System on Tax Paying Behavior

In 1992, Mongolia adopted a set of tax laws, defining the rights and obligations of tax authorities and taxpayers, and creating a new legal framework for tax relations. When transitioning to the new tax system, the system for taxpayers to determine self-assessment tax rates was introduced for the first time. Mongolia switched to the "Integrated Tax Administration System" or electronic system in 2021. According to Business registry statistics, a total of 220,000 enterprises were registered in 2023. However, only 35 percent of the registered enterprises did not submit tax reports and did not pay the reported taxes on time, indicating that tax compliance is not satisfactory among enterprises. Unfortunately, little has been studied in our country on tax compliance behavior and the factors affecting it. This study aims to analyze the effect of the tax electronic system on tax compliance behavior. Concerning the framework of the Theories of Reasoned Action and Planned Behavior an intention to pay taxes was considered as a mediating factor in the relationship of the electronic tax system and tax compliance behavior. The analyses confirmed that the tax electronic system influences tax compliance behavior through the intention to comply with taxes. Hence, motivation to increase the use of the tax electronic system may improve tax compliance behavior.

The importance of understanding Indigenous employment in the Indigenous business sector

AbstractIndigenous employment has been the subject of numerous policies in Australia, with governments aiming to increase the workforce participation rate amongst Indigenous people in recent years. Indigenous‐owned businesses, formally defined as businesses that are at least 50% Indigenous‐owned, have been demonstrated in previous research to maintain substantially higher levels of proportional Indigenous employment than non‐Indigenous businesses. This suggests that Indigenous‐owned businesses maintain work environments that are more supportive of and conducive to Indigenous employment, meriting the influence of Indigenous‐owned businesses' workplace practices in future Indigenous employment policy design. Using administrative data from two Indigenous business registries (Black Business Finder and Supply Nation), this paper provides an updated empirical analysis of the Indigenous business sector. This paper demonstrates that Indigenous‐owned businesses of all sizes, industries, locations and profit statuses consistently average proportional Indigenous employment rates higher than the Indigenous proportional population. Of all the people employed in Supply Nation‐listed businesses, over 35% are Indigenous. The potential impact of the Indigenous Procurement Policy is illustrated by differentials in the size of businesses and their capacity to employ Indigenous staff. This paper provides analysis of the Indigenous business sector that can inform future policy direction for both Indigenous employment and Indigenous business policies.

Refugee Entrepreneurship: The Case of Venezuelans in Colombia

This paper analyzes the entire business registry of Colombia during 2015-2022, a period when Colombia received two million Venezuelan immigrants and refugees. We present two main findings. First, firms owned by foreigners, most of them Venezuelans, tend to be 10 to 20 percent more capitalized when founded as compared to firms owned by locals within the same industry, geographic location, and year of registration. Second, while more intensive in capital, these firms owned by foreigners are just as likely to survive the first two and three years as firms owned by locals are. We discuss the implications for these findings.

High Rises and Housing Stress

Problem, research strategy, and findings The financialization of housing is a rapidly growing concern for planning researchers and policymakers, but the opacity of property ownership in most cities has hampered efforts to rigorously measure the phenomenon. Here we introduce a new approach based on big data methods. By combining web scraping of property assessment, business registry, and rental advertisement data, we reliably identified the networks of property ownership lurking behind anonymous numbered companies and established the extent of financialized rental housing ownership. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach with a quantitative case study of the financialization of rental housing in Montreal (Canada). Using spatial regression and clustering analyses, we found that there are two distinct types of financialized rental housing ownership in Montreal: one characterized by precarious and student tenants and another characterized by affluent tenants. In general, high proportions of financialized ownership are associated with higher levels of housing stress and dense housing typologies. Takeaway for practice By demonstrating meaningful differences in housing market outcomes across financialization status—which has not usually been readily accessible to either renters or planners—our findings show the importance of rental market information asymmetry. Planners should treat landlord data as one component of the information necessary to properly regulate a rental housing market. Municipalities should make property ownership information publicly accessible to facilitate public scrutiny of residential land use and more effective protection of tenant rights.

Using U.S. Business Registry Data to Corroborate Corporate Identity: Case Study of the Legal Entity Identifier

This paper offers a fresh perspective on fundamental issues in using official incorporation records to corroborate the identity of corporate entities by comparing two publicly-available sets of information, namely, business registry incorporation records and reference data from the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) system, with some focus on the monitoring function performed by LEI issuers as agents for LEI data users. Three modes of analysis are used to consider these issues, high-level analysis of LEI system data about U.S. entities with LEIs, interviews conducted with U.S. business registries, and entity-level comparisons of business registry and LEI records for entities with LEIs incorporated in the states of Ohio and Massachusetts. The fresh perspective provided here includes attention to key comparison issues such as truncation of Legal Names in official records; significant state-level variation in requirements to provide business address information in incorporation records or periodic reports; recognition that some key business register data may not be readily available or available only at a cost; whether in this context enhancements can be made to the expectations for, and disclosures by, LEI issuers in their monitoring role; and to what extent the high incidence of non-renewal of LEIs might play a role in the quality of LEI reference data. The paper develops measures of scope and degree for many key issues that can arise in using business registry information within an identity-corroboration context. The exceptional transparency of the LEI system allows for detailed comparisons that connect its data quality and value proposition with its sources and methods.

Djelatnost UNCITRAL-a na novom pravnom obliku trgovačkog društva (kao odgovor na anakronost prava društava)

The paper analyses the proposed new legal form of a company – limited liability enterprise – which is the result of the work of UNCITRAL Working Group I (micro, small and medium-sized enterprises). Following the recommendations of the UN General Assembly, UNCITRAL commenced its activities at the meeting of the Working Group held in 2014. Over the course of several sessions until 2021, the Working Group adopted two major instruments: Legislative Guide on Key Principles of Business Registry and Legislative Guide on Limited Liability Enterprises. The latter document attempts to encourage states to introduce into their national legislations a new, hybrid legal form of a legal entity primarily intended to pursue commercial activities. This new legal entity would primarily be suitable for developing countries in which a large number of enterprises operate in the informal sector of the economy, i.e. they are not registered. This poses a risk for both enterprises and states when they perform their business activities. The aim is, therefore, to create incentives for their transfer from the informal to the formal economy.

The limits to open innovation and its impact on innovation performance

This study focuses on the sectoral and geographical differences in open knowledge collaboration for the innovation performance of UK firms. Drawing on transaction cost theory and appropriability of knowledge, we adopt a resource-based view to focus on limits to open innovation. We use a generalized multi-level mixed model to test our hypotheses, controlling for time, regional and firm unobserved characteristics. Our sample includes 19,510 observations and 17,859 firms, with a small panel element of 1651 firms mainly from the UK Innovation Survey and Business Registry. Our results demonstrate that limits to open innovation differ across knowledge-intense sectors and at different geographic dimensions, with creative sectors experiencing the greatest limits to knowledge collaboration in both national and international markets. We discuss why and how this occurs, and conclude with several theoretical and policy implications.

Validnost pretpostavke o neograničenosti poslovanja za potrebe sastavljanja finansijskih izveštaja preduzeća u periodu Kovid 19

The subject of the research is testing the risk of bankruptcy and assessing the validity of the assumption of going concern to compile financial reports of selected companies in the food industry during the period of Covid-19. The analysis included five companies each from different sectors of food and beverage production, which operate in the territory of the Republic of Serbia. For bankruptcy risk, testing selected companies used the Z-score model created by Edward Altman in 1993, which was adapted to developing countries. The research period includes 2019 and 2020. Data for the preparation of the paper were taken from financial reports, notes to financial reports and auditor's reports published on the website of the Serbian Business Registry Agency. The research results show that the Covid-19 pandemic affected the operations of companies in the food industry and caused the need for a more cautious assessment of the assumption of continuity of operations to compile the company's financial reports by managers and auditors. The research also established that different companies within the same sector can be affected with different intensities, hence it is not possible to isolate the production sector within the food industry that is more significantly exposed to the consequences of the pandemic.

Frank Knight, uncertainty and knowledge spillover entrepreneurship

AbstractIn his seminal 1921 book,Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, Frank Knight distinguished uncertainty and risk. This paper applies Knight's concept of uncertainty to knowledge generated in incumbent organizations to explain the inherent difficulty in assessing potential innovations along with the key role played by knowledge spillover entrepreneurship as a conduit for transforming new knowledge created by an incumbent organization but ultimately commercialized through the creation of a new firm and innovation. Knowledge is inherently uncertain and constitutes what is characterized as the knowledge filter impeding innovative activity in the context of incumbent firms and organizations. The organizational and institutional context and market uncertainty can either facilitate or impede the spillover of knowledge from the firm where it was created to the entrepreneurial startup where it is transformed into innovation. The empirical evidence based on a large, unbalanced panel of 9,126 UK firms constructed from six consecutive waves of a community innovation survey and annual business registry survey during 2002–2014. Implications for managers, scholars, and policymakers are provided.

Marketing Activities of Łódź Voivodeship Companies on Foreign Markets – Research Findings

Purpose: The aim of this article is to determine the content of marketing strategies pursued by companies based in the Łódź Voivodeship on foreign markets. Design/methodology/approach: Literature studies and primary research by means of structured interviews and a questionnaire. The companies were sampled for the study from the Statistics Poland (formerly known as the Central Statistical Office) data, section C. These were companies registered in the National Business Registry system (REGON) in the Łódź Voivodeship at the end of 2016. From the list of over 2,800 units, 900 units were qualified for the study, and the number of returned questionnaires was 117. Findings: The expansion of Łódź Voivodship companies focuses primarily on exports. This was indicated by over 93% of the surveyed enterprises. These are so-called reactive companies, i.e. companies that export as a response to inquiries received from abroad. Marketing activities are not comprehensive. Only a quarter of the surveyed companies conducted marketing research on foreign markets. The surveyed companies implement the strategy of product and price adaptation, with intermediaries from foreign markets being mostly responsible for promotional activities. Distribution is dominated by foreign intermediaries. Less than half of the surveyed companies conduct research on the effectiveness of their marketing activities on foreign markets. Research limitations/implications: Research limitations include difficult access to surveyed companies and their reluctance to provide answers. The research results can serve the preparation of exporters’ marketing strategies and can be useful for national, regional and local governments responsible for supporting exporters. Originality/value: Expansion of knowledge about the behavior of Polish companies on foreign markets and their marketing strategies there.

Start-ups, Innovation and Knowledge Spillovers

The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship (KSTE) seeks to explain the mechanisms of how uncommercialized knowledge can be turned into new to market products. This paper uses a large unbalanced panel of 16,542 UK firms constructed from six consecutive waves of a community innovation survey and annual business registry survey during 2002–2014 to test the differences in the returns to knowledge spillover for innovation between start-ups and incumbent firms. The theoretical, managerial, and policy implications of the study are discussed.

The role of R&D and knowledge spillovers in innovation and productivity

The use of both research and development (R&D) and knowledge spillovers has been identified as the source of relative innovation underperformance in Europe vis-à-vis the United States. In this paper, we investigate R&D and knowledge spillovers at the firm level to evaluate the extent to which they complement innovation and firm productivity. We use data on a large unbalanced panel of 9213 UK firms constructed from six consecutive waves of a community innovation survey, an annual business registry survey and a business enterprise research and development survey during 2002–2014. We estimate the knowledge spillover-augmented version of the CDM model of R&D, innovation, and productivity to find that complementarities between R&D and knowledge spillovers are strongly associated with firm productivity rather than firm innovation. R&D is important for both innovation and productivity, while knowledge spillovers are more important than R&D for firm productivity. We also explore the differences between returns to R&D and knowledge spillovers across three distinctive innovation strategies.

Tiered Intermediation in Business Groups and Targeted SME Supports

Using business registry data from China, we show that internal capital markets in business groups can play the role of financial intermediary and propagate corporate shareholders’ credit supply shocks to their subsidiaries. An average of 16.7% local bank credit growth where corporate shareholders are located would increase subsidiaries investment by 1% of their tangible fixed asset value, which accounts for 71% (7%) of the median (average) investment rate among these firms. We argue that equity exchanges is one channel through which corporate shareholders transmit bank credit supply shocks to the subsidiaries and provide evidence to support the channel.

The Limits to Collaboration Across Four of the Most Innovative UK Industries

AbstractThis study demonstrates the importance and limits to external knowledge collaboration across different geographical dimensions and the most innovative UK industries (knowledge‐intensive business services (KIBS), high‐tech manufacturing, information and communication technologies (ICT), creative industries). Traditionally, this issue has presented a challenge for the geography of innovation, external knowledge sourcing and open innovation literatures, in terms of first identifying the phenomenon and second measuring it. We propose and estimate a structural model that estimates the knowledge production function with innovation inputs and outputs at the firm level. Our sample includes 19,510 observations and 17,859 firms, mainly from the UK Innovation Survey and the Business Registry. We demonstrate that external collaboration may bestow a significant advantage for innovation developed by the firm and in collaboration with other businesses, but there are limits to collaboration. They are likely to be better offset by firms in knowledge‐intense sectors (KIS), while they remain consistent across collaboration with partners across four geographical regions. Our findings call for further research on innovation and revision of national and regional innovation policies.

Internal Capital Markets in Business Groups and the Propagation of Credit Supply Shocks

Using business registry data from China, we show that internal capital markets in business groups can propagate corporate shareholders' credit supply shocks to their subsidiaries. An average of 16.7% local bank credit growth where corporate shareholders are located would increase subsidiaries investment by 1% of their tangible fixed asset value, which accounts for 71% (7%) of the median (average) investment rate among these firms. We argue that equity exchanges is one channel through which corporate shareholders transmit bank credit supply shocks to the subsidiaries and provide empirical evidence to support the channel.

Internal Capital Markets in Business Groups and the Propagation of Credit Supply Shocks

Using business registry data from China, we show that internal capital markets in business groups can propagate corporate shareholders’ credit supply shocks to their subsidiaries. An average of 16.7% local bank credit growth where corporate shareholders are located would increase subsidiaries investment by 1% of their tangible fixed asset value, which accounts for 71% (7%) of the median (average) investment rate among these firms. We argue that equity exchanges is one channel through which corporate shareholders transmit bank credit supply shocks to the subsidiaries and provide empirical evidence to support the channel.

Mind the Gap: The Reverse Spillover of Knowledge and its Impact on Innovation Performance

This study demonstrates the impact knowledge spillover and knowledge exploitation by external collaborators has on the innovation performance of UK firms across different geographical proximities and industries (knowledge intensive business services (KIBS); high-tech manufacturing; Information and Communication Technologies (ICT); creative industries). Our main focus is on the reverse knowledge spillovers of innovation. Traditionally this issue has presented a challenge for International Business (IB), geography of innovation, management literature, in terms of firstly identifying the phenomenon and secondly in measuring it. We use a multi-level mixed effect generalised linear model to test our hypotheses, controlling for time, regional and firm unobserved characteristics. Our sample includes 19,510 observations and 17,859 firms, with a small panel element of 1,651 firms mainly from the UK Innovation survey and Business registry. We demonstrate that external collaboration may become a significant advantag...

Chasing entrepreneurial firms

The search for a reliable data-set of entrepreneurial firms is ongoing. We analyze and assess longitudinal data on startups from two data sources – the National Establishment Time-Series (NETS) database and the Secretary of State (SOS) business registry data. Our primary purposes in this paper are to assess the usefulness and reliability of these databases in measuring startup activity along several quality indicators and to explore the possibility of integrating these large databases using both automated and manual processes. The NETS identifies a firm’s employment, sales, and industry but is expensive and suffers from a temporal lag. The SOS data provide up-to-date startup counts but offer limited variables. We conclude that policymakers and researchers will benefit from combing both the SOS and adjusted NETS since they provide complementary information on startups. We carefully document our methodology and make suggestions for use of the data for future research.

Cross border mobility: what do we need in practice?

The European Commission is proposing to provide efficient rules for cross-border operations. This article suggests improvements to the cross-border merger provisions in the Consolidated Company Law Directive 2017/1132 to provide better creditor protection and minority shareholder protection, more use of the Business Registries Interconnection Service and a simpler process in simpler cases. It suggests provisions relevant for creditor protection in the case of cross-border divisions, the process to be followed for a cross-border division and a simpler process for simpler cases. It also suggests a process for cross-border conversions and provisions to protect creditors and minority shareholders.