We report the results of a systematic study of the single impurity Anderson model based on a perturbative approach. Our work provides new and exact results for a number of quantities of interest. In particular we have investigated the impurity spin susceptibility as well as the spatial dependence of the spin correlation density. In view of the versatility of the technique our calculations have been carried out for several specific models of the conduction electron bare density of states ρ0(ω). Both dynamical as well as thermodynamical properties have been investigated. Our results are compared with the ones obtained by means of the renormalization group analysis and recent quantum Monte Carlo studies. The breakdown of the Clogston-Anderson compensation theorem for realistic choices of ρ0(ω) is pointed out and discussed.
