Employment Arbitration Activity and Financial Strain: A Longitudinal Analysis of AAA Filings
Analyzed employment arbitration activity using American Arbitration Association disclosure data matched to firm-level financial and employment data from Mergent Market Atlas. Built a cleaned employer-level panel from arbitration filings spanning 2004–2025, performed entity matching between AAA employer names and public-company parent firms, and developed longitudinal measures of arbitration activity, including total filings, recent filings, active years, peak filing year, persistence, burstiness, and filings per 10,000 employees.
The project identified firms with persistent, spike-driven, legacy, and recent-escalation arbitration patterns. Visual and statistical analyses suggested that arbitration activity is concentrated among a small number of firms and may be associated with financial-strain indicators, such as higher debt-to-assets, lower interest coverage, and weaker operating profitability. The analysis also highlighted important methodological issues involving platform-firm denominators, time alignment between legal and financial data, and parent-subsidiary entity matching.
