Database Review: Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS)

Abstract

Standard & Poor's Compustat North America is a database of financial, statistical, and marketing information. It provides more than 300 annual and 100 quarterly Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Statement of Cash Flows, and supplemental data items on more than 24,000 publicly held companies. Compustat files are available in both annual and quarterly formats. The industrial annual formats offer both historical and restated data. The industrial quarterly formats offer restated data as reported by the company. The restated data allows analysts to compare current and prior years' results on a comparable basis and determine financial trends and growth rates. For most companies, annual and quarterly data is available for a maximum of 20 years and 48 quarters. Standard & Poor's ExecuComp is a unique database for executive compensation analyses. The ExecuComp report library accesses more than 100 up-to-date compensation and financial items for over 2,500 companies (over 24,000 executives). The Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) maintains the most comprehensive collection of standard and derived security data available for the NYSE, AMEX and Nasdaq Stock Market. CRSP is a research center at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and maintains historical data spanning from December 1925 to the present. CRSP's trademark of unique issue identifiers tracks a continuous history of securities, providing a seamless time-series examination of the issue's history. CRSP's unparalleled accuracy and dedication to excellence has made CRSP data a staple of academic and commercial research and data analysis throughout the world. The CRSP US Government Bond File is available in two frequencies: daily and monthly. The daily product contains data for about 3,100 marketable US Government securities traded in the secondary market and during the issued trading period from June 14, 1961 to the present. The monthly product contains data for I/B/E/S International Inc. provides timely analyst information on over 18,000 companies in more than 60 countries – more than any other source. In addition, I/B/E/S provides a collection of firms' forecast measures for accounting information. Data terms, such as earnings estimate per share, revenue, net income, and pre-tax profit, are included in forecast measures. The I/B/E/S database is useful for researchers who are interested in analyst forecast information, such as researchers documenting market effects of missing earnings expectations. Eventus performs event studies using data read directly from CRSP stock databases or pre-extracted from any source. The Eventus system includes utility programs to convert calendar …