The Promise and Challenges of New Datasets for Accounting Research
Accounting, Organizations, and Society 2017 Conference on New Corporate Disclosures and New Media
22 Pages Posted: 12 Mar 2018
Date Written: 2017
Abstract
I describe a brief summary of the development of databases used in accounting research and discuss the research questions addressed in traditional databases and ‘new’ databases. The new data include online searches such as Google Trends data; textual data from corporate disclosures, analyst reports, conference call transcripts, earnings press releases, and news media articles; social network and social media data from Twitter, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and other data. New data holds promise for research on attention or cognitive processing constraints; on tone/valence, affect, deceptiveness and credibility for capital market and financial reporting outcomes. I examine the econometric challenges of new data and suggest the potential for new data to offer new auditing tools to detect poor financial reporting, which will help to discourage earnings management.
Keywords: Big Data, Google Trends, Twitter, LinkedIn, Glassdoor, social network, limited attention, behavioral bias, psychological bias, tone management, textual data, stock market returns, earnings, analysts
JEL Classification: G02, G14, M40, M41, M42
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation