Table 1 (Panel B) shows descriptive statistics for level of earnings scaled by
:ginning-of-the-year market value. The total number of observations is 75,999 td the number of available observations per year increases steadily from about 100 for 1976 to about 4,400 for 1994. The mean and median earnings both :crease throughout the sample period with the median always greater than the ean. These statistics, as well as inspection of the data, reveal that extreme :gative scaled earnings observations are more common in later years.