The dates of deletion (code DLDTE) and the reasons for deletion (code DLRSN) for all of the research companies were obtained from COMPUSTAT for all of the research companies included in the study. Although there are eight reasons why companies are moved from COMPUSTAT’s active to research file, only companies that were deleted because of bankruptcy (reason code 2) and liquidation (reason code 3) are considered to have failed for the purposes of this study. Companies with codes other than two or three as reasons for deletion are simply left out of this study. One limitation of this study is the fact that the date given on COMPUSTAT as the date of deletion is, in many cases, not the actual date that a particular company failed. If this study is extended at some point, more research will have to be done to find out the actual date that all of the failed companies went bankrupt or were liquidated. Also, one of the reasons for deletion listed for many companies is “other” (code 10). More research would have to be done for each of these companies to see specifically why they are no longer listed on COMPUSTAT because in some cases, these companies may have gone bankrupt or been liquidated due to some special extenuating circumstance.
Data for all active and research companies in the retail industry was collected for the years 2005-2012, and the result is a listing of data for 3,595 companies. Many of the companies in this original list of data have missing data for some or all of the variables chosen for several reasons. First, retail companies that became unlisted at any time are all included in the list because of the inclusion of COMPUSTAT research companies. Secondly, some of the research companies are left out of this study because of the fact that they were deleted from COMPUSTAT for reasons other than bankruptcy and liquidation, and they are thus also missing data. Finally, some of the active companies are missing data because of the fact that many of the retail firms in the study did not start up until after 2005. Therefore, the final sample for this study only contains 1,203 firms. Because of the large quantity of missing data, firm-year observations are used in this study as opposed to firms