We introduce a novel real-time dataset—Companies House Real -Time (CHRT) — that captures daily firm creation and dissolution activity for the full population of UK – registered companies. CHRT tracks official business demography statistics but is available months earlier, providing timely disaggregated indicators. We demonstrate that firm entry is a leading indicator of GDP and employment. Using a structural vector autoregression (SVAR), we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in firm entry
raises GDP by 0.1–0.2% over the following year and generates persistent gains in employment and productivity. These results highlight the value of real-time administrative data for macroeconomic monitoring, and underscore the importance of business formation as a margin of adjustment during economic fluctuations. Our findings suggest that firm entry data should be integrated into early-warning systems and policy frameworks, particularly in times of crisis or structural change.
Authors Yannis Galanakis and Anthony Savagar