Historical SIC data compustat

Hans Peterse

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Jun 9, 2020, 7:58:55 PM6/9/20

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Dear all,

My apologies if this has been discussed earlier w/ this group. I run into a problem retrieving historical SIC codes from compustat,

I have a global database which I need to investigate on the amount of switching between industries, best to be done by counting the switching between sectors.

The US companies have clear and changing SIC codes (retrieved from CRSP).

All the other global companies unfortunately only show the header or most recent SIC code. Therefore its not possible for me to conduct my research.

Any thoughts on how to retrieve this data would be much appreciated.

Best,

Hans

Yingchou Lin

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Jun 11, 2020, 2:32:13 PM6/11/20

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Have you tried the variable historical SIC from Compustat or segment dataset? SIC from Compustat and CRSP are not comparable since they are coded differently.

Attila Balogh

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Jun 12, 2020, 10:01:11 AM6/12/20

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Hans,

The Variable Descriptions tab is always a good starting point when looking for a variable. Historical SIC is stored as SICH.

https://wrds-web.wharton.upenn.edu/wrds/ds/compd/funda/index.cfm?navId=83

* Compustat Global ;

data g_sic_hist;
      set comp.g_funda;
      where gvkey="014447";
      keep gvkey fyear conm sich;
run;

* Compustat North America ;

data sic_hist;
      set comp.funda;
      where gvkey="001300" and fyear>=1987;
      keep gvkey fyear conm sich;
run;

Attila

Hans Peterse

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Jun 16, 2020, 4:15:18 PM6/16/20

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Thanks all for replying to me, publicly and privately. Thanks to your help I was able to compute most of my desired results.

Since companies can have multiple SIC codes, I was curious if there was a Compustat or CRSP variable counting the total number of SIC's a companies has?

Thanks in advance for your response.

Hans

Op woensdag 10 juni 2020 01:58:55 UTC+2 schreef Hans Peterse:

Attila Balogh

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Jun 17, 2020, 11:22:10 AM6/17/20

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Hans,

The data you are looking for is available in the Compustat segment history dataset.

https://wrds-web.wharton.upenn.edu/wrds/tools/variable.cfm?library_id=7&file_id=122788

data seg_sic;
set comp.seg_naics;
where gvkey="001300" and year(datadate)=2019;
run;

Attila

Hans Peterse

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Jun 17, 2020, 3:23:52 PM6/17/20

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Thanks a lot Atilla, this helped me find the date I wanted!

Do you happen to know if this kind of data is also available for the global database of compustat (so not north america)?