The link-match tale: new microdata from unit level association (Linkage e matching per generare nuovi database integrati a livello individuale)

Connections among Big Data, administrative registers, general censuses and smart surveying are receiving increasing attention in several domains where statistics is more and more important. When there are different data sets at hand, Record Linkage and Statistical Matching are usually applied to integrate the information which they separately collect. Sometimes, naming and methodological features of the two methods have been shallowly used, contributing to the confusion about their potential applications and scopes. This work aims to spread light on the specific purposes they are meant, clarify to what extent they are similar and how much they differ when they are used interchangeably, discussing a toy example employing the Collection Faure data.