METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF NON‐NORMALLY DISTRIBUTED FINANCIAL RATIOS: A COMMENT
评论了用回归分析替代财务比率分析的建议，认为其不必要且误导，强调财务比率在预测和解决规模问题上的作用，并指出比率分布问题不意味着应放弃比率。
This comment argues that proposals to replace financial ratio analysis with regression analysis of the separate ratio components are unnecessary and misguided. Financial ratios are used to predict other variables and not to predict their own components. These ratios also help deal with the size scale problem inherent in regular accounting data, but regression error terms would suffer from the same size effect as the regular data. The actual statistical distribution of financial ratios is an open, important question, but that question in itself does not call for an abandonment of fmancial ratios.