Data
Data from my research that I make available to other researchers. If you use a dataset in your work, please cite the papers listed with it.
Geographic Dispersion of U.S. Public Firms Coming soon
A firm-level measure of how widely a company’s operations are spread across the United States, built from the text of its annual reports. For each 10-K filing, the measure records which U.S. states the report names and how often. The number of distinct states named is a proxy for the breadth of a firm’s operating footprint, following García and Norli (2012). This is the dispersion measure used in Geographic Dispersion and the Cost of Debt and Committed or Caught? Geographic Dispersion and Corporate Misconduct.
| Source | Annual reports filed on SEC EDGAR: forms 10-K, 10-K405, 10-KSB and their variants, excluding amendments |
| Coverage | Fiscal years 1994–2025 |
| Filings parsed | 294,290 |
| Unit | Filing (firm-year) |
| Format | CSV and Stata, with a README and variable definitions |
| Status | Being prepared for release |
Variables
The planned release contains, for each filing:
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| Firm and filing identifiers | SEC identifiers for the filer and the filing, form type, filing date and fiscal year |
| Mentions by state | Number of times each of the 50 U.S. states is named in the filing |
| Number of states | Number of distinct U.S. states named in the filing (García and Norli, 2012) |
| Dispersion (1 − HHI) | One minus the Herfindahl index of state-mention shares |
The exact variable names and identifiers will be documented in the README that ships with the data.
Download
Firm-year panel
Firm-year panel
README and variable definitions
To be notified when the data are released, email nural@nfaisal.com.
How to cite
If you use these data, please cite both papers:
- Faisal, Nur Al, 2026, Geographic dispersion and the cost of debt, Working paper, available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7211198.
- Faisal, Nur Al, 2026, Committed or caught? Geographic dispersion and corporate misconduct, Working paper, available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7316699.
Please also cite the paper that introduced the measure:
- García, Diego, and Øyvind Norli, 2012, Geographic dispersion and stock returns, Journal of Financial Economics 106, 547–565.
BibTeX:
@unpublished{Faisal2026CostOfDebt,
author = {Faisal, Nur Al},
title = {Geographic Dispersion and the Cost of Debt},
year = {2026},
note = {Working paper, available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7211198}
}
@unpublished{Faisal2026CommittedOrCaught,
author = {Faisal, Nur Al},
title = {Committed or Caught? Geographic Dispersion and Corporate Misconduct},
year = {2026},
note = {Working paper, available at SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=7316699}
}
@article{GarciaNorli2012,
author = {Garc{\'i}a, Diego and Norli, {\O}yvind},
title = {Geographic Dispersion and Stock Returns},
journal = {Journal of Financial Economics},
volume = {106},
number = {3},
pages = {547--565},
year = {2012}
}When the papers are published, these citations will be updated here.
Terms of use
- The data are free for academic, non-commercial research.
- Please cite the papers above in any work that uses the data.
- The data are provided as is, without warranty. Text-based measures can reflect boilerplate, legal venues or incorporation language as well as operations; see the papers for the validation and robustness checks.
- Please do not redistribute the files; link to this page instead so others get the latest version.
Version history
| Version | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | Forthcoming | Initial release: fiscal years 1994–2025 |
Questions
Questions, corrections or suggestions are welcome: nural@nfaisal.com.