Big Data for China Stock Market and Accounting Research

Modeling performance of firms in China? Use CSMAR (China Stock Market & Accounting Research) to gather data on China’s stock markets and listed companies.

What CSMAR offers

Positioned as a China-focused companion to CRSP and Compustat, CSMAR offers everything from stock prices and financials to shareholder and restructuring information. Find details for companies listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges plus select data from ChiNext and SSE STAR Market.

How to get CSMAR data

Penn students, staff, and faculty can register for WRDS (Wharton Research Data Services). You’ll get industry-standard datasets through a single system that supports large-scale analyses.

Power users can leverage the WRDS Cloud and other programmer-oriented options. After configuration, these interfaces will let you work directly in R, Python, Stata, and more.

For robust access with less setup, extract data through the WRDS web interface. I followed these steps to download data for the chart at the top of this post:

1. Sign in to WRDS.
2. Under Subscriptions, navigate to CSMAR.
   

   

3. Select the topic you want to measure (e.g.: Monthly Trading Data > Stock Price & Returns).
   

   

4. Follow the on-page steps to select
   1. Dates (e.g.: December 1990 through December 2020),
   2. Companies (e.g.: STKCD 000001 000002) and markets,
   3. Variables (e.g.: Stock Code (STKCD0); Company Name In English (CONME); Monthly Closing Price (MCLSPRC)), and
      

      

   4. Your download format (e.g.: comma-delimited text (*.csv)).
5. Submit Form.

You’ll soon have a fresh data file ready for analysis.

How to get help with CSMAR

Have questions about the data? Try the Manuals and Overviews tab. You’ll find lots of CSMAR database documentation.

For WRDS platform support, try WRDS Support pages. Or contact WRDS directly.

The Lippincott librarians, alternatively, can suggest more business data sources for your analysis.

What’s next

What have you wondered about China’s markets? Jump-start your analysis with CSMAR today!