WRDS / CRSP / Compustat — the paywalled core (academic access)

Licensed — not free

WRDS is subscription-gated, so it lives in the Licensed tier, not with the free datasets. The badge above reads “Access confirmed (licensed)”, deliberately not the green “Verified” used on free pages: the access path was exercised in-session against a real institutional WRDS account (live crsp.msf and comp.funda rows returned) — but the data itself is not free. Without a subscription you cannot reproduce this; see the free-substitute map below for what you can.

WRDS (Wharton Research Data Services) is the standard delivery layer for the paid datasets that most empirical finance still runs on: CRSP (the canonical US return history), Compustat (fundamentals), IBES (analyst forecasts), OptionMetrics, Thomson/Refinitiv, ExecuComp, BoardEx, and more. The ZeroPaper pipeline uses it when a license is present; when one isn’t, the free sources in this section cover a large share of the same ground.

Who can get it (academic access)

• Most universities already license WRDS. If you are faculty, a PhD student, or a research staff member at a subscribing institution, you can request a personal WRDS account through your library or finance department at no cost to you — the institution pays the subscription.
• Accounts use a username/password plus (typically) Duo 2FA. Keep credentials in .env (WRDS_USER, WRDS_PASS) — never hard-coded.
• No institutional subscription → no WRDS. There is no individual free tier. Use the free substitutes below.

How the pipeline uses it (when licensed)

A persistent local WRDS server is started once per session so Duo 2FA fires a single time; scripts then call a thin client rather than reconnecting:

import sys; sys.path.insert(0, "code")
from utils.wrds_client import wrds_query, wrds_start
wrds_start()                                  # no-op if already running
df = wrds_query("SELECT permno, date, ret FROM crsp.msf "
                "WHERE date >= '2000-01-01' AND shrcd IN (10,11) LIMIT 100")

Direct wrds.Connection() works too, but Duo fires on every connection — open one per script and reuse it.

What the free sources here substitute for

Need	Paid (WRDS)	Free substitute on this wiki
Asset-pricing factors / test assets	CRSP + own sorts	Ken French
Cross-sectional anomaly signals	CRSP/Compustat merge	Open Source Asset Pricing
Data-mining benchmark	Compustat ratios	Flexible data-mining
Fundamentals / disclosure	Compustat	SEC EDGAR (XBRL)
Macro calibration	—	FRED
Retirement / pension assets	—	DOL Form 5500

What the free set does not replace: survivorship-bias-free long CRSP daily returns, full Compustat history with point-in-time discipline, IBES detail, and OptionMetrics. For those, an institutional WRDS license remains necessary.

Key WRDS libraries (reference)

crsp (msf, dsf, msenames, ccmxpf_linktable), comp (funda, fundq, company), ibes (statsum_epsus, det_epsus), optionm, tfn, ff, execcomp, boardex. Always filter on date and share/exchange codes; never SELECT * on CRSP daily (~100M rows).

Citation

Cite the underlying provider, not WRDS itself — e.g. CRSP, Center for Research in Security Prices, LLC, accessed via WRDS, YYYY-MM-DD; S&P Global Market Intelligence Compustat, accessed via WRDS, YYYY-MM-DD.