Measure cross-sectoral structural similarities from financial networks

Abstract

Auditing is a multi-billion dollar market, with auditors assessing the trustworthiness of financial data, contributing to financial stability in a more interconnected and faster-changing world. We measure cross-sectoral structural similarities between firms using microscopic real-world transaction data. We derive network representations of companies from their transaction datasets, and we compute an embedding vector for each network. Our approach is based on the analysis of 300+ real transaction datasets that provide auditors with relevant insights. We detect significant changes in bookkeeping structure and the similarity between clients. For various tasks, we obtain good classification accuracy. Moreover, closely related companies are near in the embedding space while different industries are further apart suggesting that the measure captures relevant aspects. Besides the direct applications in computational audit, we expect this approach to be of use at multiple scales, from firms to countries, potentially elucidating structural risks at a broader scale.