Trade in goods by enterprise characteristics by partner zones and countries

International trade statistics are among the most widely available and consulted data, and offer a picture of trade flows between countries, broken down by types of goods and services. However, such conventional international trade statistics do not offer insights into the actors who are actually engaged in cross-border trade.

The Trade by Enterprise Characteristics (TEC) database aims to fill this gap, and contains international annual trade in goods data broken down by different categories of enterprises. The data provide a solid basis for policy analyses that explore which types of firms are responsible for international trade in goods. It answers questions like who are the firms that are engaged in foreign markets, and what are their characteristics. Both the export and import values and the number of exporting and importing enterprises are available for 26 OECD and 8 non-OECD countries: including 27 EU member states plus Canada, Costa Rica, Norway, Israel, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. Data for the United Kingdom haven't been updated since reference year 2018, for Korea and Mexico since reference year 2015.

The database consists of ten datasets presenting various combinations of breakdowns by economic activity, employment size class, concentration of trade, partner countries, commodity, type of traders, type of ownership (foreign vs. domestic), exports intensity.

TEC data are collected in co-operation with Eurostat and directly from National Statistical Authorities (NSOs). To create TEC data, NSOs have to attribute trade flows to enterprises with different characteristics by merging data on international trade (usually customs data) with statistical business register information on enterprises at the individual enterprise level.

Related datasets:

Employer Business Demography Statistics,

Business Demography Statistics,

Structural Business Statistics by Size Class,

Timely indicators of entrepreneurship by enterprise characteristics.