Compustat North America#
At a Glance#
Find information here .
If you have questions, reach out to rs@kellogg.northwestern.edu .
Description#
Compustat North America is a database of U.S. and Canadian fundamental and market information on active and inactive publicly held companies. It provides more than 300 annual and 100 quarterly Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Statement of Cash Flows, and supplemental data items. For most companies, annual history is available back to 1950 and quarterly history back to 1962 with monthly market history back to 1962.
Compustat North America files also contain information on aggregates, industry segments, banks, market prices, dividends, and earnings.
Access#
This dataset is available via Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) . WRDS offers both a web interface for small interactive queries and the WRDS Cloud for running batch programs. Faculty may request a temporary class account for course use.
Data Coverage & Key Identifiers#
Attribute |
Value |
|---|---|
Time period |
~1950–present |
Geographic coverage |
US and Canada |
Unit of observation |
Firm (annual or quarterly) |
Primary identifier |
GVKEY — unique company ID; IID — issue identifier |
Commonly linked via |
CUSIP, ticker; CRSP’s CRSPLink merge (links GVKEY to PERMNO/PERMCO) |
Key variables |
Income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement, market prices, dividends, earnings, industry segments |