EuroGroups register and industry concentration
Why are these statistics needed?
Industry concentration is the degree to which production in an industry or in the whole economy is dominated by a few large firms. These experimental statistics are the first effort to calculate the industry concentration in the EU for sections of the statistical classification of economic activities (NACE). This is done based on data available in the EuroGroups register (EGR) and from structural business statistics (SBS).
These experimental data can reveal for example in which industry sectors the production is dominated by a few multinational enterprise groups and what share the production is dominated by them.
Why are they experimental?
The data are experimental because the EGR, which is the primary data source that is used, is in an experimental phase. For more details, please refer to our webpage on the experimental statistics on multinational enterprise groups.
How are they produced?
Industry concentration indices measure the extent to which industry sales are dominated by 1 or more businesses. At European Union level, the industry sector can be defined using the NACE.
The industry concentration can be captured by computing the so-called 4-firm concentration ratio. The ratio should be calculated by dividing the total sales of the 4 largest multinational enterprise groups in an industry sector by the total sales of all enterprises in that industry sector.
However, due to the limited availability of sales data in the EGR, the ratio is actually computed using data on employment as a proxy for sales.
For further details, please consult our methodological note.
Access to the statistics
Feedback
To help Eurostat improve these experimental statistics, users and researchers are kindly invited to give us their feedback by email:
- How useful are the published data on industry concentration by NACE section?
- How useful would it be for the publication to provide detailed data on NACE division as well?
- How useful would it be for the publication to provide detailed data on all EU countries?