McCombs School of Business
Research
Research : WRDS

Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS)

Wharton allows the following to have individual accounts:
a current faculty member, Ph.D. student, visiting faculty, administrative staff member, or research assistant. These accounts do not expire.
In addition, faculty can request accounts for their classes. These accounts expire at the end of the semester.

The McCombs Business School subscribes to the Wharton Research Data Service (WRDS), an Internet-based business data service that allows faculty and students to access and analyze a variety of popular financial data sources for academic research, including Compustat, CRSP, IBES, and TAQ.  The WRDS interface offers researchers point-and-click access and a menu of variables for researching several hundred firms simultaneously.  Telnet access allows users to run existing C, FORTRAN, SAS, and a variety of statistical analysis software on WRDS with little or no modification.  Entire databases can be downloaded to a PC for further analysis.

  • State-of-the-Art web-based data management services provide seamless delivery of data from multiple sources onto Unix workstations and desktop PCs. 

  • WRDS allows Faculty, Researchers and Students to query and retrieve information from a wide variety of databases across multiple disciplines such as Finance, Marketing, Management, Accounting, Economics, Banking, and Insurance. 

  • 24 hours a day, 7 days a week system monitoring.

Databases available through WRDS

  • CRSP

  • Compustat

  • IBES
  • Global Vantage
  • And Others

WRDS Subscription Process

To obtain your individual WRDS accounts:

    Step I - Point your web browser to http://wrds.wharton.upenn.edu.

    Step II - Along the left-hand side you will notice a link entitled "Account Request." Click on that link. 

    Step III - Fill out the Account Request form. Be sure to choose the University of Texas at Austin from the list of schools. When you are finished click on "Submit." This will send your request to the WRDS helpdesk where your account will be generated. 

    Step IV - Once your account has been created, WRDS will send an e-mail with your Log-in and Password information to the Computer Services department (WRDS@mccombs.utexas.edu who will forward the information along to you. This is part of the WRDS Authentication Process to ensure that no one outside the University of Texas, Austin, attempts to receive an account.  

    Step V - You may log into WRDS and begin using your new account.  Because the WRDS service is internet-based, you can access Wharton Research Data Services from anywhere in the world!

WRDS may also be accessed through an NT or UNIX log in session. Once you have received your account information, consult the "Help" menu on the WRDS homepage for further instructions on using these access methods. Please note, telnet data access will be available through the /wrds/utexas/... directory structure.

Account Parameters: Storage space for each user is limited to 25 megabytes of permanent workspace and up to 250 megabytes of temporary project space. In addition, 64 gigabytes of common temporary space is available. 

WRDS professional research and technical support specialists are available at  to assist you with any concerns.  


 
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