The Wharton School and PACAP Research Center Deliver Research Data Over the Web.

Business/Education & Technology Editors

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 30, 2002

The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania and The Sandra Ann Morsilli Pacific-Basin Capital Markets (PACAP) Research Center of The University of Rhode Island have entered into a partnership that will give universities access to the PACAP Database, a comprehensive set of information about the Pacific-Basin region's economy and equity markets.

Schools will tap the database through the Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS), an Internet-based service that provides instant access to a number of financial, accounting, economic, management, marketing, and banking datasets.

The number of subscribers to the PACAP Databases has increased by 300% since 1994 illustrating the demand for clear, concise, and accurate Asian capital market data. "The PACAP database enables us to conduct empirical research in many important financial markets in East Asia," said Leong Siew Meng, Professor and Interim Dean at the University of Singapore Business School (NUS), one of the licensers of the program. "The database is a valuable resource for finance scholars at the NUS who are working in either asset pricing or corporate finance and are interested in the Pacific region."

"The data are organized clearly and have been very helpful to my research," said Professor S. W. Joh of the State University of New York at Albany. "I appreciate the Pacific-Basin Capital Markets Research Center for creating the data and making them available to researchers. This vital information is possible through the collaborative agreements between PACAP and various institutions and stock exchanges."

The PACAP Research Center was established in 1989 at the University of Rhode Island to meet the growing demand for information on the capital markets in the Pacific-Basin region. The PACAP Databases are a compilation of historical data beginning in 1975 and continuing through to the present for eight Pacific-Basin markets including Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. Annual updates to the PACAP Databases provide the most current information for all of the listed companies in each of the stock exchanges. The PACAP Databases, currently operating in collaboration with The University Hawaii, add twenty-five years of comprehensive Pacific-Basin capital markets data to the WRDS system.

Wharton Research Data Services includes over a terabyte of research data online from a wide range of data providers, including the Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP), Standard & Poor's COMPUSTAT, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the New York Stock Exchange. By making these datasets accessible from a simple web-based interface, WRDS has revolutionized faculty research and instruction on quantitative data.

WRDS' simple interface offers researchers point-and-click access and a menu of variables for researching more than several thousand firms simultaneously. WRDS provides access to a variety of statistical analyses, and allows entire databases or parts thereof to be downloaded to a PC for further analysis.

Access to WRDS is licensed by over 60 of the world's leading business schools including Stanford, Chicago, MIT, Northwestern, Harvard, and the London Business School.

The following files are included for each market in the PACAP database via WRDS:

-- Company File

-- Daily Exchange Rate File

-- Key Economic Statistics Files

-- Calendar File

-- Financial Statements Files

-- Capital Distributions File

-- Monthly Market Returns File

-- Monthly Indices File

-- Daily Market Returns File

-- Daily Indices File

-- Monthly Stock Price and Returns File

-- Daily Stock Price and Returns File