The higher profit margins since 1997 may reflect the greater concentration in the grocery trade. 2  Profit margin is defined as operating income less cost of goods as a percentage of operating income. BIS Review 47/2001  11  Labour cost growth and wage costs as a share of income in distributive trades declined sharply until 3 the mid-1990s and have since picked up. This had the opposite effect on operating margins , which fell in the five years to 1999. One possible explanation is that weaker competition in distributive trades the last few years has made it possible to increase profit margins without losing market shares and thereby weakening profitability. This may also have contributed to the industry’s role of spearhead in the wage settlement in 1998. However, a fresh report from the Norwegian Agricultural Economics Research Institute and ECON 4 shows that gross margins on meat in the grocery trade were reduced somewhat between the spring of 1999 and the autumn of 2000. Farmers' margins fell fairly markedly. The survey concludes that it is primarily the processing industry that increased margins on meat products in this period. A substantial share of the food industry is sheltered from international competition through trade policy measures. Analyses conducted by Statistics Norway show that productivity growth in this industry was 5 very low between 1993 and 1999 . Weak productivity growth in this industry and in the graphics and publishing industry contributed to the substantially poorer productivity growth in Norway compared with Sweden in this period.
[4]  Chart 1 Euro area services trade balance (EUR billions)  Source: ECB. Notes: Quarterly data. The latest observation is for the fourth quarter of 2020. Chart 2 Euro area national accounts: selected components (quarter-on-quarter growth rates in percentages)  Source: Eurostat. Notes: Seasonally and working day adjusted quarterly data. The latest observation is for the fourth quarter of 2020. This highlights a dichotomy between the residency principle underpinning the macroeconomic statistical framework and the global footprint of MNEs. Data on the numerous entities belonging to MNE groups in different countries are not consolidated in the accounts of the home country of the parent MNE. Instead,  these are recorded in the national statistics of the economies where the entities reside, even if their role in domestic economic activity may be quite minor. This dichotomy also extends to the way statistics are collected and compiled: while companies are global, data are gathered nationally, refer only to the activities of MNEs that are located in the country and are subject to strict data confidentiality rules. While European law enables cross-border data sharing for statistical purposes, this is often prevented or highly circumscribed by national rules. Owing to the decentralised manner of data collection, the information sets for global companies that are available to national statisticians differ across countries, which limits cross-country comparability and overall data quality, including for the euro area.