IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wop/ohsrfe/9607.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of Industry Classifications on Financial Research

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Although industrial classifications are an important part of financial research, few researchers explicitly recognize the data base they use in classifying industrial structure. There are substantial differences, however, in primary SIC codes for firms on Compustat and CRSP. Over 36% of the classifications disagree at the two-digit level and nearly 80% disagree at the four-digit level. Thus, research results and significance levels based on industry comparisons could differ depending on the source of SIC codes, irrespective of the underlying economics of the problem being analyzed. This research analyzes the impact of industrial classification on financial research. Using approximately 10,000 firms jointly covered by Compustat and CRSP, we simulate a typical research experiment. Specifically, we: 1) examine the extent of agreement between commonly used industrial classifications, 2) examine how SIC codes change over time, and 3) test the specification and power of alternate industrial classifications in typical financial research. Our results document dramatic differences in industrial classifications and analyze the impact of these differences upon statistical inference in finance.

Suggested Citation

  • Kathleen M. Kahle & Ralph A. Walkling, "undated". "The Impact of Industry Classifications on Financial Research," Research in Financial Economics 9607, Ohio State University.
    • Handle: RePEc:wop:ohsrfe:9607
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cob.ohio-state.edu/~fin/journal/dice/papers/1996/96-7.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bradley, Michael & Jarrell, Gregg A & Kim, E Han, 1984. "On the Existence of an Optimal Capital Structure: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 857-878, July.
    2. Barclay, Michael J & Smith, Clifford W, Jr, 1995. "The Priority Structure of Corporate Liabilities," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(3), pages 899-917, July.
    3. Comment, Robert & Jarrell, Gregg A., 1995. "Corporate focus and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 67-87, January.
    4. Schultz, Paul, 1993. "Unit initial public offerings *1: A form of staged financing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 199-229, October.
    5. Guenther, David A. & Rosman, Andrew J., 1994. "Differences between COMPUSTAT and CRSP SIC codes and related effects on research," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 115-128, July.
    6. Agrawal, Anup & Walkling, Ralph A, 1994. "Executive Careers and Compensation Surrounding Takeover Bids," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(3), pages 985-1014, July.
    7. Kang, Jun-Koo, 1993. "The international market for corporate control *1: Mergers and acquisitions of U.S. firms by Japanese firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 345-371, December.
    8. Kadlec, Gregory B & McConnell, John J, 1994. "The Effect of Market Segmentation and Illiquidity on Asset Prices: Evidence from Exchange Listings," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(2), pages 611-636, June.
    9. Clarke, Richard N, 1989. "SICs as Delineators of Economic Markets," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(1), pages 17-31, January.
    10. Ferson, Wayne E & Foerster, Stephen R & Keim, Donald B, 1993. "General Tests of Latent Variable Models and Mean-Variance Spanning," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 131-156, March.
    11. Mian, Shehzad L & Smith, Clifford W, Jr, 1992. "Accounts Receivable Management Policy: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(1), pages 169-200, March.
    12. Slovin, Myron B & Sushka, Marie E, 1993. "Ownership Concentration, Corporate Control Activity, and Firm Value: Evidence from the Death of Inside Blockholders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1293-1321, September.
    13. Nayar, Nandkumar & Rozeff, Michael S, 1994. "Ratings, Commercial Paper, and Equity Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1431-1449, September.
    14. Kaplan, Steven, 1989. "The effects of management buyouts on operating performance and value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 217-254.
    15. Gilson, Stuart C., 1989. "Management turnover and financial distress," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 241-262, December.
    16. Boehmer, Ekkehart & Masumeci, Jim & Poulsen, Annette B., 1991. "Event-study methodology under conditions of event-induced variance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 253-272, December.
    17. Kothari, S P & Shanken, Jay & Sloan, Richard G, 1995. "Another Look at the Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(1), pages 185-224, March.
    18. Brown, Stephen J. & Warner, Jerold B., 1985. "Using daily stock returns : The case of event studies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 3-31, March.
    19. Roll, Richard, 1992. "Industrial Structure and the Comparative Behavior of International Stock Market Indices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(1), pages 3-41, March.
    20. Kaplan, Steven N & Weisbach, Michael S, 1992. "The Success of Acquisitions: Evidence from Divestitures," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(1), pages 107-138, March.
    21. Gosnell, Thomas & Keown, Arthur J & Pinkerton, John M, 1992. "Bankruptcy and Insider Trading: Differences between Exchange-Listed and OTC Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(1), pages 349-362, March.
    22. Ofek, Eli, 1994. "Efficiency Gains in Unsuccessful Management Buyouts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(2), pages 637-654, June.
    23. Franks, Julian R. & Torous, Walter N., 1994. "A comparison of financial recontracting in distressed exchanges and chapter 11 reorganizations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 349-370, June.
    24. Opler, Tim C & Titman, Sheridan, 1994. "Financial Distress and Corporate Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(3), pages 1015-1040, July.
    25. Freeman, Robert & Tse, Senyo, 1992. "An earnings prediction approach to examining intercompany information transfers," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 509-523, December.
    26. Degeorge, Francois & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1993. "The Reverse LBO Decision and Firm Performance: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1323-1348, September.
    27. Chan, Louis K. C. & Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Lakonishok, Josef, 1995. "Evaluating the performance of value versus glamour stocks The impact of selection bias," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 269-296, July.
    28. Cusatis, Patrick J. & Miles, James A. & Woolridge, J. Randall, 1993. "Restructuring through spinoffs*1: The stock market evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 293-311, June.
    29. Agrawal, Anup & Jaffe, Jeffrey F & Mandelker, Gershon N, 1992. "The Post-merger Performance of Acquiring Firms: A Re-examination of an Anomaly," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1605-1621, September.
    30. Eckbo, B Espen, 1992. "Mergers and the Value of Antitrust Deterrence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(3), pages 1005-1029, July.
    31. Shah, Kshitij, 1994. "The nature of information conveyed by pure capital structure changes," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 89-126, August.
    32. Petersen, Mitchell A & Rajan, Raghuram G, 1994. "The Benefits of Lending Relationships: Evidence from Small Business Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-37, March.
    33. Fertuck, Leonard, 1975. "A Test of Industry Indices Based on SIC Codes," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(5), pages 837-848, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yasser Alhenawi & Martha L. Stilwell, 2019. "Toward a complete definition of relatedness in merger and acquisition transactions," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 351-396, August.
    2. Barber, Brad M. & Lyon, John D., 1997. "Detecting long-run abnormal stock returns: The empirical power and specification of test statistics," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 341-372, March.
    3. Rizov, Marian, 2008. "Corporate capital structure and how soft budget constraints may affect it," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 22(4), pages 648-684.
    4. Martynova, M., 2006. "The market for corporate control and corporate governance regulation in Europe," Other publications TiSEM 8651e281-4914-41f2-ac14-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Barber, Brad M. & Lyon, John D., 1996. "Detecting abnormal operating performance: The empirical power and specification of test statistics," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 359-399, July.
    6. Megginson, William L. & Morgan, Angela & Nail, Lance, 2004. "The determinants of positive long-term performance in strategic mergers: Corporate focus and cash," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 523-552, March.
    7. Stein, Jeremy C., 2003. "Agency, information and corporate investment," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 111-165, Elsevier.
    8. Kothari, S. P. & Warner, Jerold B., 1997. "Measuring long-horizon security price performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(3), pages 301-339, March.
    9. Dmitri Boreiko & Maurizio Murgia, 2013. "European spin-offs Origin, value creation, and long-term performance," BEMPS - Bozen Economics & Management Paper Series BEMPS05, Faculty of Economics and Management at the Free University of Bozen.
    10. Lars Schweizer & Andreas Nienhaus, 2017. "Corporate distress and turnaround: integrating the literature and directing future research," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 10(1), pages 3-47, June.
    11. Lie, Erik & Lie, Heidi J. & McConnell, John J., 2001. "Debt-reducing exchange offers," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 179-207, June.
    12. Dionysia Dionysiou, 2015. "Choosing Among Alternative Long-Run Event-Study Techniques," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 158-198, February.
    13. Marc Goergen & Luc Renneboog, 2004. "Shareholder Wealth Effects of European Domestic and Cross‐border Takeover Bids," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 10(1), pages 9-45, March.
    14. Mateev, Miroslav & Andonov, Kristiyan, 2018. "Do European bidders pay more in cross-border than in domestic acquisitions? New evidence from Continental Europe and the UK," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 529-556.
    15. Stienstra, Miranda, 2020. "The determinants and performance implications of alliance partner acquisition," Other publications TiSEM 7fdee0c2-d4d2-4f5b-95e3-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    16. Atkas, Nihat & Bodt, Eric de & Roll, Richard, 2001. "Market Response to European Regulation," University of California at Los Angeles, Anderson Graduate School of Management qt0qc9p8gf, Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA.
    17. Gordon M. Bodnar & Charles Tang & Joseph Weintrop, 1997. "Both Sides of Corporate Diversification: The Value Impacts of Geographic and Industrial Diversification," NBER Working Papers 6224, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Kanungo, Rama Prasad, 2021. "Uncertainty of M&As under asymmetric estimation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 774-793.
    19. Yushu Zhu, 2017. "Call it good, bad or no news? The valuation effect of debt issues," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 57(4), pages 1203-1229, December.
    20. Racic, Stanko, 2010. "Is Japanese management superior? Evidence from the performance of the USA targets in partial acquisitions," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 14-34, February.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wop:ohsrfe:9607. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dfohsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.