Definition: Birth date (of enterprise)

Category: Business demography

The date on which a unit was born.

In principle the date could be decided by referring to the definition of the enterprise: the birth takes place at the (first) moment the conditions of the definition are met, so the moment there is an organisational unit producing goods or services.

The convention is that the date on which the first financial commitments for investments are made should be taken. This may seem somewhat early, since actual production will take place afterwards, but this allows for the statistical coverage of all important variables, such as investments, from the beginning. This date is not considered too early since serious commitments have been made, however, from the point of view of cost-efficiency and response burden it may not always be desirable to actually collect the date of birth from the enterprise; in that case the registration date at the administrative source has to be taken. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ramon/statmanuals/files/KS-32-10-216-EN-C-EN.pdf Eurostat and OECD,  "Eurostat - OECD Manual on Business Demography Statistics" (Edition 2007)