Abstract

This research was conducted in Mexico between August 2010 and June 2011 as part of the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Enterprise Survey 2010, an initiative of the World Bank. Data from 1480 establishments was analyzed. Stratified random sampling was used to select the surveyed businesses.

The objective of the study is to obtain feedback from enterprises in client countries 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 face-to-face 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.

The standard Enterprise Survey topics include firm characteristics, gender participation, access to finance, annual sales, costs of inputs/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% 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

The study was conducted using stratified random sampling. Three levels of stratification were used in the sample: firm sector, firm size, and geographic region.

Industry stratification was designed in the following way: the universe was stratified into seven manufacturing industries and one "other" manufacturing category, - two services categories, retail and IT, and one "other" services category. Each of the manufacturing categories had a target of 160 interviews; the "other" manufacturing category and the three services categories all had targets of 120 interviews.

Size stratification was defined following the standardized definition for the Enterprise Surveys: small (5 to 19 employees), medium (20 to 99 employees), and large (more than 99 employees). For stratification purposes, the number of employees was defined on the basis of reported permanent full-time workers. This seems to be an appropriate definition of the labor force since seasonal/casual/part-time employment is not a common practice, except in the sectors of construction and agriculture.

Regional stratification was defined in eight locations (city and the surrounding business area): Mexico City, Estado de Mexico (MAMC), Guadalajara, Monterrey, Puebla, Monclova, Veracruz, and Leon.

Ciudad Juarez and Coahuila, which were included in the 2006 round of the Enterprise Surveys, were omitted in 2010 due to security concerns.

For Mexico, two sample frames were used. The first was supplied by the World Bank and consists of enterprises interviewed in Mexico 2006. The World Bank required that attempts should be made to re-interview establishments responding to the Mexico 2006 survey where they were within the selected geographical locations and met eligibility criteria. That sample is referred to as the Panel. The second sample frame was produced from the 2009 Economic Census of INEGI (Instituto Nacional de Geografía e Informática), the national bureau of statistics.

INEGI's database uses the SCIAN 2007 classification for economic activities while the Enterprise Surveys are based on the ISIC classification. Therefore, a conversion between the two classifications was made.

The two sample frames were then used for the selection of a sample with the aim of obtaining interviews with 1,600 establishments with five or more employees.

The quality of the frame was assessed at the outset 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 contained 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 12.55% (1079 out of 8600).

Mode of data collection

Face-to-face [f2f]

Research instrument

The current survey instruments are available: - Core Questionnaire [ISIC Rev.3.1: 45, 50, 51, 52, 55, 60-64, 72]; - Core Questionnaire + Manufacturing Module [ISIC Rev.3.1: 15-37]; - Core Questionnaire + Retail Module [ISIC Rev.3.1: 52]; - Screener Questionnaire.

The "Core Questionnaire" is the heart of the Enterprise Survey and contains the survey questions asked of all firms across the world. There are also two other survey instruments - the "Core Questionnaire + Manufacturing Module" and the "Core Questionnaire + Retail Module." The survey is fielded via three instruments in order to not ask questions that are irrelevant to specific types of firms, e.g. a question that relates to production and nonproduction workers should not be asked of a retail firm. In addition to questions that are asked across countries, all surveys are customized and contain country-specific questions. An example of customization would be including tourism-related questions that are asked in certain countries when tourism is an existing or potential sector of economic growth.

The standard Enterprise Survey topics include firm characteristics, gender participation, access to finance, annual sales, costs of inputs/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. The questionnaire also assesses the survey respondents' opinions on what are the obstacles to firm growth and performance.

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

The number of realized interviews per contacted establishment was 0.17. The estimate is based on the total number of firms contacted including ineligible establishments. 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 0.29.

Complete information regarding the sampling methodology, sample frame, weights, response rates, and implementation can be found in "Description of Mexico ES 2010 Implementation" in external resources.