edgar: An R Package for the U.S. SEC EDGAR Retrieval and Parsing of Corporate Filings

Abstract

This paper introduces the R package "edgar" to download and analyze the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) mandatory public disclosures in the United States. Corporations in the U.S. submit their periodic reports, registration statements, and financial reports electronically to the SEC. The SEC makes these reports publicly accessible to everyone through the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval System (EDGAR). As financial reporting is one of the most crucial aspects of the financial system, efficient retrieval of EDGAR filings becomes imperative for analysts and researchers. We summarize the implementation of the "edgar" package that facilitates downloading, parsing, searching, and sentiment analysis of corporate reports.

Keywords: EDGAR filing, textual analyses, text parsing, text mining

JEL Classification: C10, G30, G20