Hi everyone,

I am calculating book leverage ratio in COMPUSTAT. There are some firm-year have missing value of debt. I understand that sometimes COMPUSTAT documents missing value of debt even the liabilities are non-zero. In those cases, it’s better to replace the missing debt value as zero. But I have trouble to find the corresponding COMPUSTAT items for debt and liabilities to do this conversion.

Can someone please tell me what COMPUSTAT data itmes should I use, and is there a better way to treat the missing debt value?

Best,
Bo

hi Bo,

Replacing missings with zero makes sense, although dropping such obs would also soon good to me.
Common debt variables in Funda are:
DLC Debt in Current Liabilities - Total
DLTT Long-Term Debt - Total

Best,

Joost