Survey of Small Business Finances

The Survey of Small Business Finances (SSBF) collects information on small businesses (fewer than 500 employees) in the United States. Owner characteristics, firm size, use of financial services, and the income and balance sheets of the firm are just some examples of the types of information collected. Methodology reports, codebooks and other related documentation, and the full public data sets are available here for the 1998, 1993, and 1987 SSBF.

SSBF homepage at the Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System

1998 Survey of Small Business Finances

Downloadable Codebook: updated by FRB 12 March 2001, PDF format.

Main Study Questionnaire (PDF)

Public-Use Data Base Frequency Distribution (PDF)

The datafile (FRB updated version of 12 March 2001) is accessible accessible over the web (within the BC network) via 

. use http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/data/ssbf/ssbf98.dta
Be warned that this file is 7mb and Stata must be given at least as much RAM as the file size to read the file.

The file was constructed from the zipped SAS Transport file, which contains 1,514 variables and 3,561 observations.

1993 National Survey of Small Business Finances

Downloadable Codebook: updated by FRB 26 May 1999, PDF format.

Main Study Questionnaire (PDF)

Public-Use Data Base Frequency Distribution (PDF)

The datafile (FRB updated version of 26 May 1999) is accessible accessible over the web (within the BC network) via 

. use http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/data/ssbf/nssbf93.dta
Be warned that this file is 9mb and Stata must be given at least as much RAM as the file size to read the file.

The file was constructed from the zipped SAS Transport file, which contains 1,222 variables and 4,637 observations.

1987 National Survey of Small Business Finances

Downloadable Codebook: updated by FRB 1 April 1993, PDF format.

Main Study Questionnaire (PDF)

The datafile (FRB updated version of 1 April 1993) is accessible accessible over the web (within the BC network) via 

. use http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/data/ssbf/ssbf87.dta
Be warned that this file is 5mb and Stata must be given at least as much RAM as the file size to read the file.

The file was constructed from the zipped SAS Transport file, which contains 1,274 variables and 3,224 observations.

Revised: 18 July 2002