Database Guide: WRDS: Overview

On top blue horizontal bar click Get Data > Concepts > select a concept or click All Concepts.

NOTE: This menu displays all pertinent datasets. Choose the one(s) to which Business Library subscribes.

Go to Home page to view Library's subscriptions.

On top blue horizontal bar

1. Click Get Data > Companies/ Variables > Find Variables.
2. Select dataset(s) from the list or click All; enter your keyword(s) in search box.
3. Click Search Selected Libraries.
4. Click Variables in Forms tab above results.
5. Click the link in Query Form column to start search in selected dataset.

NOTE: Unless the search was limited to subscriptions, results include all pertinent datasets. Choose the one(s) to which Business Library subscribes.

Go to Home page to view Library's subscriptions.

On top horizontal blue bar click Get Data > Vendors > All Your Subscriptions. Then click on dataset name.

Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) is online platform that provides access to analytics and historical financial and accounting data for corporations and banks, historical economic data and more. WRDS incorporates multiple datasets. All Stanford users have full access to a suite of datasets to which the GSB Library subscribes.

To retrieve historical data:

• Historical financial and accounting data for corporations and banks (CRSP/Compustat Merged, Bureau van Dijk), or historical earnings forecasts and ratings (CRSP/Compustat Ratings, Thomson-Reuters, Zacks), or historical stocks and indexes prices (CRSP datasets) and more
• Historical data for any number of companies, including the option to upload a custom list of company codes, e.g. tickers, CUSIPs, etc. in .txt file format (one code per line), or to run search against the entire database

WRDS offers a common search screen and consistent data format across all its datasets. The search is generally standardized as follows:

Step 1: Choose your date range. Click in each date box and select a date from the drop-down list.

Step 2: Apply your company codes.

• Select code type, e.g. TICKER, CUSIP, etc. The code type should correspond to the code format of your input, e.g. select TICKER if you download companies' tickers
• To input codes, select one of the following methods:
  • Company Codes: Search by individual entity. Either enter your codes in Company Codes window separated by space, or use the Code Lookup link to find codes.
  • Browse: upload .txt file with company codes in accepted format - one code per line
  • Select Saved Codelists
  • Search the entire database
• Screening Variables: Review output format for a number of pre-selected variables.
• Conditional Statements (Optional): Use to limit output data by specific criteria.

Step 3:​​ Query / Choose Variables: Select data items for output report.

Step 4: Select query output: Checkmark file format, e.g. Excel or other. Select compression type,or date format if needed.

Click Submit Query. 

To return to Home page, click WRDS logo at top.