Background
XBRL, eXtensible Business Reporting Language, is an XML-based markup language used to communicate financial and business data electronically. Companies are now required to submit their financial reports to the SEC in XBRL format. Using this novel data, we created and validated a measure that captures the accounting reporting complexity (ARC) of firms. ARC is associated with lower financial reporting quality and with poor analysts' performance. The papers below provide more details on XBRL and the steps used to create ARC. Files were last updated on August, 2019.
Links to papers:
Below we provide links to data that includes ARC and several related measures (We now include quarterly data):
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Accounting Today:
Professors propose new measure of accounting complexity
FEI Daily: Measuring Accounting Disclosure Complexity with XBRL
Compliance Week: As Complexity Rises, Quality Slides, XBRL-Based Study Says
Udi Hoitash, Ph.D.
Lilian L. and Harry A. Cowan Research Professor
D'Amore-McKim School of Business,
Northeastern University, Faculty profile page
Rani Hoitash, Ph.D., CISA
John E. Rhodes Professor of Accountancy
Bentley University, Faculty profile page
SSRN research papers, Google Scholar page
Email: rhoitash@bentley.edu
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