mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Digitizing Historical Balance Sheet Data: A Practitioner's Guide

arXiv 2204.00052 ↗First posted 31 Mar 2022cs.CV econ.GN q-fin.ECcited by 1

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Abstract (arXiv)

This paper discusses how to successfully digitize large-scale historical micro-data by augmenting optical character recognition (OCR) engines with pre- and post-processing methods. Although OCR software has improved dramatically in recent years due to improvements in machine learning, off-the-shelf OCR applications still present high error rates which limit their applications for accurate extraction of structured information. Complementing OCR with additional methods can however dramatically increase its success rate, making it a powerful and cost-efficient tool for economic historians. This paper showcases these methods and explains why they are useful. We apply them against two large balance sheet datasets and introduce quipucamayoc, a Python package containing these methods in a unified framework.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 12 of its 58 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 31 Mar 2022.

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12 of 58 references.

References · 12

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Citing papers per year: 2025: 1.

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  1. 2025Predicting the Past: Estimating Historical Appraisals with OCR and Machine Learningcited by 0