policymakers demonstrate

Developments in Data for Economic Research 581
There was also an interesting trade-off with respect to the frequency of
data collection, between monitoring requirements (for which monthly data are
enough) and crisis management (for which daily data are more adequate). The
view held at the time was that if banks designed their data systems for normal
reporting, they would not necessarily be able to accommodate daily reporting
when needed. A weekly reporting frequency was selected, with the side
benefit of forcing banks to significantly improve their internal data analytic
capabilities.
13.3.3 Linking Existing Microdata
There is no doubt that the G20 Data Gaps Initiative is leading to better,
more comparable, and more timely cross-country data. However, access to
researchers is limited to the macro-indicators. In this section, we evaluate existing
initiatives and prospects for harmonizing and linking existing microdata
across countries.
Data Issues Assessed by MAPCOMPETE
The analysis of the competitiveness of firms is mostly done on the basis of
macro-indicators (i.e., measured at the national level). This is partly because
these macro data are easy to communicate and the measures can be computed
relatively straightforwardly. However, competitiveness of a country (or a sector)
is an idle concept, since competitiveness is related to the ability of firms (in
a given country or sector) to efficiently produce goods and services. As such,
it is crucial to start the analysis from the firm level and take firm heterogeneity
into account, in order to fully grasp the impact of, for instance, the financial
crisis.
This was the starting point of the FP7-funded project MAPCOMPETE (www
.mapcompete.eu). The objectives of MAPCOMPETE were to study and compare
existing firm data from 25 European countries and produce new micro
(i.e., bottom-up) indicators related to productivity, firm dynamics, international
activities and other aspects related to competitiveness. When possible, these
micro indicators were linked to available macro indicators. All this allows for
the replacement of the macro indicators by the more informative (because they
take firm heterogeneity into account) micro indicators.
Although the benefits of these new and comparable micro indicators should
be obvious, it is impossible, in the current data environment, to construct them
for many countries. MAPCOMPETE identified several reasons for this (Castellani
and Koch, 2015). First, there are important differences across countries in
terms of availability and accessibility of the data, as well as data definitions
(including different units of observations or timing). Second, it is often simply
impossible to uniquely link existing datasets inside a given country. Finally,