Abstract

The survey was conducted in the Dominican Republic between August 2016 and April 2017 as part of Enterprise Surveys project, an initiative of the World Bank. The objective of the survey is to obtain feedback from enterprises on the state of the private sector as well as to help in building a panel of enterprise data that will make it possible to track changes in the business environment over time, thus allowing, for example, impact assessments of reforms. Through interviews with firms in the manufacturing and services sectors, the survey assesses the constraints to private sector growth and creates statistically significant business environment indicators that are comparable across countries. Only registered businesses are surveyed in the Enterprise Survey.

Data from 359 establishments was analyzed. Stratified random sampling was used to select the surveyed businesses. The data was collected using face-to-face interviews.

The standard Enterprise Survey topics include firm characteristics, gender participation, access to finance, annual sales, costs of inputs and labor, workforce composition, bribery, licensing, infrastructure, trade, crime, competition, capacity utilization, land and permits, taxation, informality, business-government relations, innovation and technology, and performance measures. Over 90 percent of the questions objectively ascertain characteristics of a country's business environment. The remaining questions assess the survey respondents' opinions on what are the obstacles to firm growth and performance.

Geographic coverage

National

Analysis unit

The primary sampling unit of the study is the establishment. An establishment is a physical location where business is carried out and where industrial operations take place or services are provided. A firm may be composed of one or more establishments. For example, a brewery may have several bottling plants and several establishments for distribution. For the purposes of this survey an establishment must make its own financial decisions and have its own financial statements separate from those of the firm. An establishment must also have its own management and control over its payroll.

Universe

The whole population, or the universe, covered in the Enterprise Surveys is the non-agricultural economy. It comprises: all manufacturing sectors according to the ISIC Revision 3.1 group classification (group D), construction sector (group F), services sector (groups G and H), and transport, storage, and communications sector (group I). Note that this population definition excludes the following sectors: financial intermediation (group J), real estate and renting activities (group K, except sub-sector 72, IT, which was added to the population under study), and all public or utilities sectors.

Kind of data

Sample survey data [ssd]

Sampling procedure

Three levels of stratification were used in this country: industry, establishment size, and region.

Industry stratification was designed in the way that follows: the universe was stratified into Manufacturing industries (ISIC Rev. 3.1 codes 15- 37), Retail industries (ISIC code 52) and Other Services (ISIC codes 45, 50, 51, 55, 60-64, and 72).

Size stratification was defined as follows: small (5 to 19 employees), medium (20 to 99 employees), and large (100 or more employees).

Regional stratification for the Dominican Republic ES was done across three regions: Santo Domingo, Santiago-Puerto Plata-Espaillat, and the rest of the country.

The sample frame consisted of listings of firms from these sources: - a list of 360 firms from the Dominican Republic 2010 ES for panel firms - a list of firms obtained from El Directorio de Empresas y Establecimientos (DEE) 2015 and Oficina Nacional de Estadística (ONE) for firms not covered in 2010.

The quality of the frame was assessed at the onset of the project through visits to a random subset of firms and local contractor knowledge. The sample frame was not immune from the typical problems found in establishment surveys: positive rates of non-eligibility, repetition, non-existent units, etc. In addition, the sample frame contains no telephone/fax numbers so the local contractor had to screen the contacts by visiting them. Due to response rate and ineligibility issues, additional sample had to be extracted by the World Bank in order to obtain enough eligible contacts and meet the sample targets.

Given the impact that non-eligible units included in the sample universe may have on the results, adjustments may be needed when computing the appropriate weights for individual observations. The percentage of confirmed non-eligible units as a proportion of the total number of sampled establishments contacted for the survey was 23.9% (504 out of 2,112 establishments).

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The structure of the data base reflects the fact that two different versions of the survey instrument were used for all registered establishments. Questionnaires have common questions (core module) and respectfully additional manufacturing- and services-specific questions.

The eligible manufacturing industries have been surveyed using the Manufacturing questionnaire (includes the core module, plus manufacturing specific questions).

Retail firms have been interviewed using the Services questionnaire (includes the core module plus retail specific questions) and the residual eligible services have been covered using the Services questionnaire (includes the core module).

Each variation of the questionnaire is identified by the index variable, a0.

The last complete fiscal year is January to December 2015. For questions pertaining to monetary amounts, the unit is Dominican Peso.

Cleaning operations

Data entry and quality controls are implemented by the contractor and data is delivered to the World Bank in batches (typically 10%, 50% and 100%). These data deliveries are checked for logical consistency, out of range values, skip patterns, and duplicate entries. Problems are flagged by the World Bank and corrected by the implementing contractor through data checks, callbacks, and revisiting establishments.

Response rate

Survey non-response must be differentiated from item non-response. The former refers to refusals to participate in the survey altogether whereas the latter refers to the refusals to answer some specific questions. Enterprise Surveys suffer from both problems and different strategies were used to address these issues.

Item non-response was addressed by two strategies: a- For sensitive questions that may generate negative reactions from the respondent, such as corruption or tax evasion, enumerators were instructed to collect "Refusal to respond" (-8) as a different option from "Don't know" (-9). b- Establishments with incomplete information were re-contacted in order to complete this information, whenever necessary.

Survey non-response was addressed by maximizing efforts to contact establishments that were initially selected for interview. Attempts were made to contact the establishment for interview at different times/days of the week before a replacement establishment (with similar strata characteristics) was suggested for interview. Survey non-response did occur but substitutions were made in order to potentially achieve strata-specific goals.

The number of interviews per contacted establishments was 0.46. This number is the result of two factors: explicit refusals to participate in the survey, as reflected by the rate of rejection (which includes rejections of the screener and the main survey) and the quality of the sample frame, as represented by the presence of ineligible units. The number of rejections per contact was 0.17.