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Access Now: Wharton Research Data Service (WRDS)

   
Wharton Research Data Service

What it is:

  • A standardized platform for accessing and downloading financial and economic datasets from various sources.

What you can expect to find:

  • Listing of datasets relevant to research in finance, accounting, economic, management, and banking.
  • Data may be available at intervals of annual, quarterly, monthly and daily, depending on the set.
  • Selecting a dataset will offer options to select specific variables that are available in that set.
  • Variables are retrieved based on a set of specified company identifiers.

Some useful things you can do:

  • Extract data for use in spreadsheets or statistical software like SAS, STATA, SPSS, etc.
  • Retrieve data for a specific set of industry codes or company identifiers (ticker, GVKey, CUSIP number, etc.).
  • Retrieve data for selective variables on all available companies.

Limitations:

  • Users may be asked to created a user account using your NC State email in order to access this database.

Content sources:

  • Local subscriptions include the following sets in addition to others:
    • COMPUSTAT North America
    • CRSP
    • CUSIP Master File
    • Corporate Library
    • EVENTUS
    • Global Insight
    • NYSE TAQ
    • RiskMetrics (formerly IRRC)
    • Thomson Reuters
  • Check the landing page for a current listing of available datasets.

Available Tutorials:

  • Extensive data manuals and an online forum is linked from inside the database.

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