In this report we present a harmonized data set over the period 1972-2000, containing two-yearly data on the number of non-agricultural business owners and the size of the labour force for 23 OECD countries, as well as the quotient of these two variables which is called the business ownership rate of a country. The data set is called COMPENDIA (version 2000.2), which means COMParative ENtrepreneurship Data for International Analysis. It has been constructed by EIM Business and Policy Research, using official OECD statistics (in particular OECD Labour Force Statistics) as well as other relevant sources. The 23 countries are the 15 countries of the European Union plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

In COMPENDIA 2000.2 we have made an attempt to make business ownership rates comparable across countries and over time. This is not straightforward as different countries measure business ownership or self-employment in different ways, and these differences are not always corrected for by OECD. The main problem in harmonizing business ownership data is the varying statistical treatment of owner/managers of incorporated businesses (incorporated self-employed), as this category of workers is classified as wage-and-salary workers in some countries, and as self-employed workers in other countries. We have chosen our business ownership definition to include unincorporated and incorporated self-employed. However, unpaid family workers, self-employed in the sectors agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing, and individuals who are self-employed as secondary occupation (next to wage-employment) are all excluded from our business ownership count. For countries not following our business ownership definition in OECD Labour Force Statistics, we make corrections. This involves estimation of the number of incorporated self-employed as well as removal of unpaid family workers from the data. We also correct for trend breaks. For these corrections we make use of various other sources. The present report provides a detailed description of the construction of the COMPENDIA data for each country. Special attention is paid to the United States. This country alone represents about 30% of all self-employed reported in the COMPENDIA data set.

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