Understanding the processes and dynamics underlying the birth, survival and death of businesses can provide an important perspective on the mechanisms generating new jobs and ensuring better economic development in all types of regions.

About the project

Developing business demography indicators at sub-national level is a crucial tool to monitor both entrepreneurship and job opportunities and to understand how regions and cities can contribute to national job creation and prosperity.

The OECD regional business demography project aims to: 

• Assess the main methods in measuring subnational business demography
• Analyse key issues and trends in business dynamics at the regional level
• Develop a new database on business demography for OECD regions

The OECD report on Geography of Firm Dynamics (2017) provides methods and data to measure and analyse business demography across OECD regions.

Main Findings

• In order to consistently measure business demography across countries, indicators should be based on employer firms. On average 40% of all firms are employer firms, but that share differs substantially across countries, reflecting different tax codes and legal systems.

• Business dynamics differ a lot geographically. The variation in firm births, deaths and survival rates is large not only across but also within countries.

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