Compustat

Compustat
Name	Compustat
Industry	Financial data
Founded	1960s
Owner	S&P Global
Headquarters	New York City
Products	Financial databases, analytics

Compustat Compustat is a comprehensive financial and market database widely used by academics, investors, and institutions for historical company fundamentals and pricing. Established in the late 20th century and later integrated into S&P Global, it aggregates standardized financial statements, identifiers, and metadata for public and private firms worldwide. The database underpins research in finance and accounting, supports regulatory filings, and interoperates with analytics tools used by universities, asset managers, and government agencies.

Overview

Compustat supplies time-series and cross-sectional data covering income statements, balance sheets, cash flows, share counts, and industrial classification for thousands of issuers from markets including the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Users integrate Compustat with pricing sources, corporate actions, and identifiers provided by organizations such as S&P 500, Russell 3000, Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ, NYSE, TSX, and FTSE 100. The dataset interoperates with bibliographic and identifier systems such as CUSIP, ISIN, SEDOL, and Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) metadata produced by MSCI and FTSE Russell.

History and Ownership

Compustat began as a product from a research-driven company in the 1960s and expanded through the computerization of corporate filings and the rise of electronic trading. Its corporate lineage includes acquisition and consolidation events tied to major publishing and financial-information firms, culminating in ownership by S&P Global, a large information services conglomerate with connections to McGraw-Hill history and longstanding relationships with exchanges like New York Stock Exchange and index providers such as Standard & Poor's. Over decades Compustat’s governance and product roadmap have been influenced by regulatory changes associated with entities such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and by academic demand from institutions like Harvard University, University of Chicago, Wharton School, and London School of Economics.

Data Coverage and Products

Compustat offers multiple products and modules, including North American and Global Fundamentals, Point-in-Time datasets for backtesting, and linkage tables that map companies to indices and securities. Commercial offerings integrate with portfolio platforms and analytics engines from vendors like Bloomberg L.P., Refinitiv, FactSet, Morningstar, and IHS Markit. University syllabi and research papers often reference Compustat extracts alongside data from repositories such as CRSP, WRDS, Eikon, and datasets used by journals like Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies.

Methodology and Standardization

Compustat standardizes heterogeneous filings by reconciling accounting items reported under frameworks such as US GAAP and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The methodology includes item mapping, currency conversion, adjustments for stock splits and dividends, and consolidation rules that reflect practices at multinational firms like General Electric, Toyota, Royal Dutch Shell, and Volkswagen Group. For classification, Compustat aligns with schema from NAICS and industry taxonomies used by S&P Global Market Intelligence and MSCI. Academic researchers compare Compustat’s treatment of extraordinary items, discontinued operations, and restatements with alternative sources maintained by institutions such as National Bureau of Economic Research.

Licensing and Access

Access to Compustat is provided under commercial licenses to corporations, universities, and government agencies, often through platforms like Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) or direct feeds integrated into enterprise data warehouses held by organizations such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, and Vanguard. Licensing agreements address redistribution, user counts, and archival rights and interact with procurement processes at entities such as Federal Reserve Board and large pension funds like California Public Employees' Retirement System. Access modalities include FTP/API delivery, cloud-hosted query interfaces, and packaged CSV/SQL extracts compatible with statistical software from vendors like SAS Institute, StataCorp, and RStudio.

Use Cases and Impact

Compustat underlies empirical research in corporate finance, asset pricing, and accounting by scholars at MIT, Stanford University, and Columbia University, informing influential studies cited in forums such as American Finance Association conferences. Financial institutions employ Compustat in risk modeling, factor construction, and backtesting strategies used by hedge funds like Renaissance Technologies and asset managers such as BlackRock. Policymakers and regulators draw on Compustat-derived analyses when assessing systemic risk or conducting market structure research at bodies including the Federal Reserve System and the Bank of England.

Criticisms and Limitations

Critics note that Compustat’s standardized mappings can obscure substantive differences between reporting under US GAAP and IFRS and that survivorship bias and historical coverage gaps may affect longevity analyses of firms, especially when compared with raw filings held by SEC EDGAR or country registries like Companies House. Users caution about licensing constraints that limit reproducibility in academic replication efforts published in journals such as Accounting Review and Management Science. Alternative datasets from vendors like Bloomberg L.P. and Refinitiv provide competing coverage and different adjustment philosophies, prompting methodological cross-checks in replication projects overseen by research groups at NBER and university data centers.

Category:Financial databases