Replication Data for: Ledgers of the Self-Employed: Accounting for the Invisible Firm

This dataset contains financial diary records from 500 urban informal firms across Bolivia, collected in September–October 2024. Enumerators visited each firm daily for seven consecutive days, recording all transactions using double-entry accounting principles. The study generates 25,338 transaction records and constructs complete income statements and balance sheets for each firm. The central finding is that 43% of informal firms are loss-making after imputing three costs absent from standard household survey measurement: (i) owner and family labor valued at the minimum wage, (ii) economic depreciation of business assets, and (iii) interest on informal debt. The median accounting gap—the difference between survey-implied and diary-adjusted profit—is Bs 1,002 per week, or 123% of reported net income. The data enable replication of all tables and figures in the paper, including: the four-type firm typology (Viable, Precaria, Atrapada en deuda, Riesgo crítico); sensitivity analysis of the loss-making share to shadow wage assumptions; Tobin's Q estimates for viable firms; and the 15-item \"measurement scorecard\" comparing diary versus survey coverage of financial concepts.本数据集涵盖2024年9月至10月期间在玻利维亚收集的500家城市非正规企业的财务日记账记录。调查员连续7天每日走访每家企业，依据复式记账原则记录所有交易。本研究共生成25338条交易记录，并为每家企业编制完整的利润表与资产负债表。核心研究结果显示：在将标准家庭调查未纳入的三类成本进行估算后，43%的非正规企业处于亏损状态，这三类成本分别为：(i) 以最低工资标准核算的所有者及家庭劳动报酬；(ii) 企业资产的经济折旧；(iii) 非正规债务利息。会计缺口中位数（即调查估算利润与日记账调整后利润的差值）为每周1002玻利维亚玻利瓦尔（Bs），约为报告净利润的123%。本数据集可复现论文中的全部表格与图表，具体包括：四类企业分类体系（Viable、Precaria、Atrapada en deuda、Riesgo crítico）、亏损企业占比对影子工资假设的敏感性分析、存续型企业的托宾Q值（Tobin's Q）估算结果，以及用于对比日记账与调查在财务概念覆盖度的15项指标测算计分卡。