INSEE LIFI: French inter-firm ownership links (restricted access)

Restricted administrative microdata: not exercised here

LIFI is confidential French administrative microdata (INSEE). It is not for sale and not publicly downloadable: it carries no provenance badge because there is no access path we can run here. Researchers reach it only through an approved project at the CASD secure data centre, with output subject to statistical-confidentiality review. The page documents what the collection is and the gotchas; treat it as unverified. This is the honest grade under the institute’s Verified discipline.

LIFI (Enquete sur les Liaisons Financieres entre societes) is INSEE’s determination of the financial links between firms in France: who owns and controls whom, used to reconstruct business-group (groupe) structure and to assign each legal unit to a controlling group. It is the standard source for defining French corporate groups and parent-subsidiary relationships. A paper we distill uses it: Beaumont, Hebert & Lyonnet use LIFI to identify business-group structure and subsidiaries and to link firms to their M&A targets, alongside DADS workforce data and firm tax files.

• Cost: not for sale. Restricted administrative microdata.
• Producer: INSEE; access via CASD.
• Coverage: ownership and control links among French firms, used to build group perimeters; annual, with the linked-unit population evolving over time.

Access (restricted)

• Through the CASD secure data centre. Approved researchers connect to CASD via the secure SD-Box; the data never leaves the secure environment and outputs are checked before release.
• Project approval required. Access requires an approved research project and the relevant French confidentiality authorization, granted per project.
• INSEE publishes documentation of the LIFI concepts (control thresholds, group definitions), so the methodology can be read even though the data cannot be pulled.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

These are the failure modes to expect; they are documented, not verified here.

• A “group” is a constructed perimeter, not a raw field. LIFI assembles groups from ownership and control links using thresholds; the group boundary depends on those rules, and they have evolved. Use the LIFI-defined perimeter rather than inventing your own from raw stakes.
• Control versus ownership. The link concept is about control, which can differ from cash-flow ownership; do not read a control link as a precise equity share.
• Coverage thresholds and survey design. LIFI combines a survey with administrative sources and has size and reporting thresholds; small links can be missing. Do not read an absent link as proof of independence.
• Identifier joins. Firms are keyed by SIREN; linking LIFI to DADS (SIRET establishments) and to tax files requires the SIREN/SIRET mapping and care with restructurings. Verify the join.
• Time consistency. Group perimeters change year to year as links are added or dropped; a firm can enter and leave a group for reporting reasons. Build point-in-time perimeters.
• Output is disclosure-reviewed and cannot be redistributed. Results leave CASD only after confidentiality checks, and the microdata itself cannot be shared.

Citation

Cite the producer and access route, e.g.: LIFI (INSEE), accessed via the CASD secure data centre under approved project, YYYY-MM-DD. State the years and the group-perimeter definition used.