Empirical Testing Of Different Alternative Proxy Measures For Firm Size

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship among total sales revenue, total assets, book value of equity, and market value of equity for different economic sectors and timeperiods.  Five statistical tools are used to examine the relationship among the different proxies of size of the firm for the period 1999-2002. Our study shows that the relationships among the four measures of the size of the firm are not the same for the different economic sectors and are not stable over time for each economic sector.  Our results suggest that the use of the four measures interchangeably as a proxy for the firm size may not be appropriate.