variables. EMIS collects information from official registries and government sources (e.g., Dion Global Solutions Limited in India).<sup>26</sup> The financial and ownership information in the global BOS database is also cross-checked against other publicly available sources that collect information in real time for listed and large firms around the globe such as Factiva, World Scope, and Global 2000 (Forbes).

The Global BOS database also benefited substantially from existing knowledge within the World Bank and other research and development institutions. To facilitate the analysis and to improve coverage of key financial, ownership, and employment variables, we constructed country-level data sets (registries). Through each registry, we were able to identify additional firms and ownership structures that were not present in ORBIS. The registries draw on data on SOES collected by the World Bank in coordination with government counterparts in the context of 150 operational projects and 20 analytical support projects from 2015 to 2019. Some examples include the information obtained for the preparation of the Integrated State-Owned Enterprise framework (iSOEF) reports for countries such as Angola, Niger, and Chad as well as country-level ASAs like the Pakistan Advisory Support to Public Expenditure Management. In addition, the Global BOS database incorporates publicly available information from other multilateral institutions or international organizations. Reports and databases constructed by other institutions such as the OECD (2017), the IMF (2021), the EBRD (2020), and the Inter-American Development Bank (2019) were also used.

Finally, the construction of the BOS database relied on field work carried out by World Bank country teams in consultation with country and sectoral experts. Country teams provided important reports and databases collected under ongoing client dialogue (i.e., PER in Mozambique), reviewed the information, and provided important insights to ensure the accuracy of the information. Teams provided expert knowledge on:

- Corporate legal structures/forms

- Business registry and statistical institute databases

- Government participation in key enabling sectors

The information from World Bank projects, external sources beyond ORBIS, and those provided by country teams greatly improves upon the coverage of any existing BOS database. (The rest of the paper will refer to information used to complement ORBIS data as the _‘SOE Supplementary Database.’)_ With the supplementary database, we were able to (i) identify entities in ORBIS that have links to the state even though the ORBIS ownership files do not identify that link, (ii) substantially expand coverage of financial variables, and (iii) add variables included in the Governance module of the BOS Global Database, such as legal entity type, administrative ministry line, government participation, among others. As shown in Figure 3 using only ORBIS leads to an underestimation of the state footprint across most countries. This is due to at least two issues: (i) _measurement error_ (misclassification of firms with state participation as private firms such as the case of the state airline in Angola), and (ii) _omission error_ given that some firms are not captured in ORBIS. In particular, the multi-phased methodological approach and supplementary databases allowed to compare the results from the GUO variable in ORBIS against the country counterfactual to evidence that there is a substantial number of firms incorrectly classified as privately owned (Figure 2).

> 26 They also collect information from global providers such as MarketLine, Euromonitor International Ltd., Oxford Economics, SBI Securities, etc.

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