disks<sup>22</sup> that ORBIS can make available for downloads through File Transfer Protocol (FTP). ORBIS provides the option to access their historical vintage files, which are structured in different modules and years.<sup>23</sup> A set of technological specifications are required to process the files and build a single database. Raw vintage files can either be downloaded on the premises through a server such as Microsoft SQL server or Postgres, or hosted in a cloud-based data warehouse. Each of these methods has its costs and benefits. The local server option requires SQL coding and database management and administration skills to create, read, update, and delete tables. Because we are dealing with data in the order of 200Gb when compressed, the server must be large enough and needs to be expandable for additional updates. The data for the Global BOS database was obtained through a local Microsoft SQL server.

# **The main tables in the ORBIS raw “vintage disks” include:**

- **Entities:** this file contains the list of all entities found in ORBIS. Each entity is identified with a unique ID called BvD ID number. The table also contains information on the entity type. The entity type categories include bank, financial company, insurance company, hedge fund, marine vessels, private equity firms, public authorities, managers, individuals, among others. This file also provides information on the country of operation.

- **Links:** this file provides the ownership information. More precisely, the linkages files (one per year) define the relationship between a pair of entities by providing the shareholding percentage.<sup>24</sup> Each pair of shareholder and subsidiary has its own row and there is one Links table for each year from 2007 to 2020. The Links table for 2019 has about 1.9 billion ownership links.<sup>25</sup> Additional cleaning to remove duplicates as well as to identify the most up-to-date information for each pair of entities was implemented.

- **Financials:** the financial module contains both the consolidated and unconsolidated balance sheets, income statements, and employment data. The information is presented in a long format where a row corresponds to the data for one entity for one year. Examples of variables in this table include the value of assets, debt, revenues, profits, stock turnover, and an estimation of some financial data for the upcoming year, among others. However, working with the financial module from the vintage files presented several limitations as documented by (Kalemli-Ozcan, Sorensen, Villegas-Sanchez, Volosovych, & Yesiltas, 2015). To overcome this and to work with the most up-to-date financial information, the global database used the financial module through the interface access.

Additional tables containing sector, industry classification, and contact information are also transferred with the main tables. The Links and Entities tables form the Ownership module of the ORBIS data, while the financial module consists of the financial data and the information in the additional tables. For the construction of the Global BOS database, we combine information from the vintage files as well as the online interface. For the identification of SOEs and the creation of ownership structures, we use ORBIS’s

> 22 The following files are available in the raw disks: Entities, Links per year, Industry classifications, Identifiers, Contact info, Additional company information, Legal information, Controlling shareholders, Basic shareholders, Headquarters, Overviews, Cash flow, BvD ID changes, Banks’ financials, Insurances’ financials, Industry's financials, and Key financials.

> 23 ORBIS is not a single database but rather a collection of separate modules and partitions of data that required further processing to be able to construct the BOS database. For instance, the ownership links are provided for each year in a separate module from the annual financial indicators and from the entity type (atemporal file).

> 24 The information includes the ownership participation of any company A in a company B, on the date of the link.

> 25 This is the total number of connections identified in the form entity A has participation (x%) in company B previous to the cleaning developed by (Cusolito, 2020), which helped to remove historical ownership links that were no longer valid.

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