Overview

The Productivity, Technology and Innovation Survey Suriname: 2013-2014 (PROTEQIN) provides firm-level microdata on the productivity, technological capabilities and innovation behavior of enterprises in Suriname. It is part of a broader effort, financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), to build comparable evidence on how firms in the Caribbean and Latin America invest in technology, adopt new practices and innovate.

To support analysis over time, the dataset brings together two firm-level surveys for Suriname: the Enterprise Survey 2010 and the PROTEQIN (Productivity, Technology and Innovation) survey of 2014. The two files are designed so that they can be linked into a pseudo panel of firms, allowing researchers to study change at the firm level even where a strict longitudinal panel is not available.

The PROTEQIN program and the regional dataset

PROTEQIN is a regional firm survey program that collects standardized information on innovation activities, technology adoption and productivity across participating Caribbean economies. Because the instrument is shared across countries, the Suriname data can be analyzed on their own or compared with other PROTEQIN economies. This dataset also includes pooled multi-country PROTEQIN files and harmonized LACES-PROTEQIN enterprise data, which place the Suriname results in a wider regional context for cross-country research on private-sector development and competitiveness.

What the data contain

The dataset includes the firm-level survey files for Suriname in CSV and Stata .dta formats, accompanied by data dictionaries describing the variables, an equivalency table, the pooled regional PROTEQIN and LACES files with their dictionaries, and technical documentation — including PROTEQIN metadata and a technical note on PROTEQIN and the associated regional data — together with the underlying questionnaires. These materials let analysts understand how variables are defined and how the surveys relate to one another.

Intended uses

The survey supports research on firm productivity, innovation and technology adoption; evaluations of private-sector and competitiveness policy; and teaching with real firm-level microdata. Access is open under the dataset's Creative Commons license; review the license terms, respect any confidentiality conditions on the microdata, and cite the dataset when reusing it (see the citation below).