Abstract:

Transport is one of the most important sections in the service sector.  Recent years have seen a constant and dynamic growth in the sector of transport enterprises. Under these conditions, only companies with effective management are able to compete on the market of transport services.  One crucial requirement in this respect is the ability to monitor the market situation by having access to detailed, regularly updated information. This task is particularly challenging for small companies, which also happen to be the category of companies which receive the least research attention. In addition, they have to compete against large transport enterprises. The use of non-standard methods of estimation that rely on administrative sources can help to extend the scope of information about the transport market. The purpose of the study described in this article is to apply Robust Generalised Regression to estimate characteristics of small transport companies.  The estimation process involves delayed variables from administrative registers used as auxiliary variables and is based on small area estimation methods. The variables of interest are estimated at the province level, i.e. at a lower level of aggregation than currently available statistics.