Research with XBRL Data, Firm Complexity, and Accounting Reporting Complexity

This website provides a repository of processed eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) data. XBRL is an open standard for reporting structured financial information, which enables the efficient gathering of data and automated comparison of financial information over time and across firms. This website also provides access to a measure of firm complexity data and SAS code for generating this measure.

The paper below provides a review of the XBRL literature and discusses directions for future research.

Hoitash, R., U. Hoitash, and L. Morris. 2021. eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL): A Review and Implications for Future Research. Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory (40)2 107-132.

Firm Complexity and Accounting Reporting Complexity (ARC)

This data set provides several measures of firm complexity based on accounting reporting complexity (ARC). These measures have been extensively validated and have several advantages over other traditional proxies for firm complexity. The data can be downloaded in an Excel or SAS format from the accounting reporting complexity page.

Go to Firm Complexity Page →

Financial Statement Notes - Textual Data

XBRL enables an accurate extraction and classification of financial statement notes, a task that is otherwise hard to accomplish. Data on many prevalent footnotes, including the complete text and count of words and numbers, are available for download in SAS format from the financial statement notes-textual data page.

Go to Textual Data Page →

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