doi:10.1016/S0167-9236(02)00096-9 
Copyright © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
EDGAR-Analyzer: automating the analysis of corporate data contained in the SEC's EDGAR database
The A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California, Riverside, CA, 92521, USA
Available online 24 May 2002.
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Abstract
Publicly owned companies, their officers and major investors are required to file regular disclosures with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). To improve accessibility to these public documents, the SEC began developed the EDGAR (Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval) electronic disclosure system. This system provides ready, free access to all electronic filings made since 1994. The paper describes a tool that automates the analysis of SEC filings, emphasizing the unstructured text sections of these documents. To illustrate the capabilities of the EDGAR-Analyzer program, results of a large-scale case study of corporate Y2K disclosures in 18,595 10K filings made from 1997 to 1999 is presented.
Author Keywords: SEC; EDGAR; Tool; Financial Analysis; Functional decomposition model; Y2K
Fig. 1. Web Information System-enabled information vendor strategies (from [21]).
Fig. 2. Y2K disclosures in corporate 10K filings submitted from January 1997 to April 1999 (FY 1996–1998). The line graph shows the number of filings per month. The bar chart shows the percentage of those filings that contained some form of Y2K disclosure.
Fig. 3. Breakdown of the self-purported impact of Year 2000 for fiscal year 1996–1998. Values represent percentage of manually checked 10Ks, with the aggregate representing percentage of 10Ks containing some form of Y2K disclosure.
Fig. 4. Frequency that various critical Y2K factors were discussed in 10K filings. The values are percentages of each the manually checked filings with some form of Y2K disclosure.
Fig. 5. Identifies the Y2K remediation phase as disclosed in manually checked 10Ks for fiscal years 1996–1998.
Fig. 6. Percentage of manually reviewed 10K filings that disclose certain remediation cost information. Capitalize/Expense Costs categories indicate how they plan to recognize these expenses on their income statements.
Table 1. Common SEC Forms accessible through EDGAR
Table 2. Comparison of features and capabilities of free and third-party tools for accessing EDGAR filings
Table 3. List of tools that provide access to EDGAR data
Table 4. Excerpt from SEC quarterly index (1Q 1997)
Table 5. Potential year 2000 problems
Table 6. Breakdown of 10K filings processed
Table 7. Keywords/phrases used to locate information in SEC 10Ks. Multiple spellings of words are included where appropriate
Table 8. Items tracked with EDGAR-Analyzer
Abstract
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