Using the ARD Establishment Level Data to Look at Foreign Ownership and Productivity in the United Kingdom

Recently the data underlying the Annual Census of Production has been made available to academic economists in the United Kingdom. The data provide information on production activity in the United Kingdom at the plant level. This paper provides some preliminary description of the data and discusses a few of its advantages and some of the problems associated with using it. A brief review of current empirical work using the ARD data is given. A particular application, looking at differences between foreign and domestic-owned establishments, is described in more detail.