<p>Sales, liabilities, total assets and capital expenditures should be logically non-negative.</p>
<p>You should however consult metadata/manual for the dataset. Perhaps negative sales record situation where company had sales but customers asked for an return. There could be similar reasons why some dataset would record the other values as negative, but these reasons would break with typical definitions of these variables (such as the example above where returns would be recorded as negative sales illustrates). Without having access to metadata/manual of your dataset it is impossible to tell.</p>
<p>If there are no metadata/manual you can try to contact the person/institution who constructed the dataset for an explanation.</p>
<p>If it is impossible to contact people who constructed the dataset then you should probably get rid of those observations as they seem to be an error.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-03-25T10:51:20.087Z
2022-03-25T10:51:20.087Z
1muflon1
<p>In many datasets missing values are recorded as -99 or -999.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-03-28T22:10:15.067Z
2022-03-28T22:10:15.067Z
Econ_User
<p>I have a dataset of US firms (around 6500 in total) containing time series of:</p>
<ul>
<li>Sales (191 negative observations corresponding to 0.0351% of total observations)</li>
<li>Liabilities (70 negative observations corresponding to 0.0129% of total observations)</li>
<li>TotalAssets (37 negative observations corresponding to 0.0068% of total observations)</li>
<li>Capital expenditures (5957 negative observations corresponding to 1.0947% of total observations)</li>
</ul>
<p>What is the economic interpretation of those negative values? Are they just noise or reporting error? How to deal with them in an economic research?</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-03-25T23:21:52.993Z
Answer to Can sales be negative? by Kevin Moberly https://www.quora.com/Can-sales-be-negative/answer/Kevin-Moberly?ch=15&oid=181896406&share=f76ced45&srid=JY6hl&target_type=answer
Alex
CC BY-SA 4.0
2022-03-25T23:25:06.010Z
Probably better to ask in accounting forums. There seems to be a tag in money se.https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/accounting
Alex
<microeconomics><soft-question><firm><data><micro-data>
Companies database with strange negative values, are they reasonable from an economic point of view?
Barbab
# Companies database with strange negative values, are they reasonable from an economic point of view?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2022-03-25)

I have a dataset of US firms (around 6500 in total) containing time series of:

* Sales (191 negative observations corresponding to 0.0351% of total observations)
* Liabilities (70 negative observations corresponding to 0.0129% of total observations)
* TotalAssets (37 negative observations corresponding to 0.0068% of total observations)
* Capital expenditures (5957 negative observations corresponding to 1.0947% of total observations)

What is the economic interpretation of those negative values? Are they just noise or reporting error? How to deal with them in an economic research?

**Tags:** microeconomics, soft-question, firm, data, micro-data

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Answer to Can sales be negative? by Kevin Moberly https://www.quora.com/Can-sales-be-negative/answer/Kevin-Moberly?ch=15&oid=181896406&share=f76ced45&srid=JY6hl&target_type=answer  
> **username_1**: Probably better to ask in accounting forums. There seems to be a tag in money se.https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/accounting  

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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2022-03-25. Score: 1

Sales, liabilities, total assets and capital expenditures should be logically non-negative.

You should however consult metadata/manual for the dataset. Perhaps negative sales record situation where company had sales but customers asked for an return. There could be similar reasons why some dataset would record the other values as negative, but these reasons would break with typical definitions of these variables (such as the example above where returns would be recorded as negative sales illustrates). Without having access to metadata/manual of your dataset it is impossible to tell.

If there are no metadata/manual you can try to contact the person/institution who constructed the dataset for an explanation.

If it is impossible to contact people who constructed the dataset then you should probably get rid of those observations as they seem to be an error.


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### Answer by username_3 on 2022-03-28. Score: 0

In many datasets missing values are recorded as -99 or -999.


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