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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Rethinking Data Collection Systems for a Globalized Production Landscape
Sixto Muriel, Juan Cervigón
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DOI:10.17265/1548-6583/2026.02.003
National Statistics Institute of Spain (INE), Madrid, Spain
Globalization has transformed production, trade, and investment, challenging traditional approaches to measuring economic activity. Multinational enterprises (MNEs), with their complex cross-border structures, create significant statistical gaps, especially in areas such as factoryless production, merchanting, processing services, and intangible assets. In Spain, the creation of the Large Cases Unit (LCU) within the National Statistical Institute (INE) marks a paradigm shift, enabling direct engagement with MNEs, validation of their microdata, and coordination of statistical reporting across domains and with partner countries. Building on this foundation, INE is advancing a centralized data collection model. The MNEData project outlines a two-stage roadmap: a short-term phase targeting international trade and globalization flows of MNEs under LCU oversight, and a medium- to long-term phase aimed at integrating all economic information into a unified system. This strategy strengthens data quality, reduces reporting burden, and aligns with the INE 2030 Strategy, positioning official statistics as a central actor in an increasingly digitalized and globalized data ecosystem.
globalization, foreign trade, global production arrangements, digital reporting, statistics, Large Cases Units (LCUs)
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