The Multinational Revenue, Employment, and Investment Database (MREID)

Summary

The Multinational Revenue, Employment, and Investment Database (MREID) compiles firm-level measures of revenue, employment and investment for multinational enterprises (MNEs) using Orbis data, harmonised for cross-country and cross-industry analysis. The database covers 185 countries, 25 industries (from agriculture and mining to services), and an initial 12-year annual time series. Data are openly available via the USITC Gravity Portal and accompanied by supporting documentation and supplementary files.

Key Points

MREID provides consistent firm-level aggregates of international and domestic revenue, employment and investment for MNEs across 185 countries and 25 industries.
The initial release spans a 12-year annual panel, enabling time-series and cross-sectional analysis of multinational activity.
Source data derive from Orbis and are processed to be comparable across countries and industries; supporting information on coverage and methods is included.
The dataset is hosted on the USITC Gravity Portal (DOI provided) and includes downloadable supporting files for replication and use.
Designed for research on FDI, trade, multinational production, profit shifting and policy evaluation — it facilitates empirical work that links firm activity to country-level outcomes.
Users should note typical Orbis limitations (coverage differences across countries, firm reporting heterogeneity) and consult the accompanying documentation when using results for policy inference.

Context and relevance

MREID fills a practical gap for researchers and policymakers who need harmonised, cross-country measures of where multinationals earn revenue, employ staff and invest. It relates directly to ongoing work on FDI measurement, phantom/offsourced investment, profit-shifting, and the impacts of trade and investment agreements. By standardising Orbis firm-level data across a broad set of countries and industries, the database enables more comparable gravity-style and structural analyses of multinational behaviour.

Why should I read this?

Short version: if you care about multinationals, FDI or trade-policy effects, this saves you weeks of data wrangling. The authors have already harmonised messy Orbis entries into country–industry–year aggregates, and put it on the USITC portal. Quick win for academics, think-tanks and policy teams — dive in and start testing hypotheses rather than rebuilding the dataset from scratch.

Author (style)

Punchy: this is a must-have dataset for anyone doing empirical work on multinational firms and international investment. The release is timely and practical — treat it as foundational data for analyses of investment, employment and revenue patterns across countries and sectors.