Do Compustat Financial Statement Data Articulate?
研究了10,681家美国非金融企业24年间的财务报表数据是否勾稽，构建了首个正式勾稽模型，并提供了处理缺失数据和修正变量以提升数据质量的方法。
ABSTRACT Using the Financial Statement Balancing Model (FSBM) from Compustat, we examine whether financial statement data articulate for 10,681 U.S. nonfinancial firms for 24 years, a total of 92,951 firm-years. We accomplish three research goals. First, we build the first formal model of financial statement articulation, providing a benchmark for subsequent discussions of articulation. Second, we show how to handle missing data to ensure articulation, by either filling in zeros or inferring the missing data using other variables in the equations. Third, we produce modified variables that resolve exceptions in the articulating equations, so that these variables form relations that are consistent across time and firms. We then compare the “modified database” (MDB) using these updated variables with the original Compustat data, and find significant differences in many commonly used financial variables, such as Altman's Z-score. We believe that our MDB has the potential to help researchers increase sample size and data quality in empirical studies.