Research Resources

Previous 30 days of commercial, office, retail, medical industrial, “live/work” real estate listings for more than 50 major markets around the United States. There “submarkets” available for most of the “major” markets. Data available includes street address, descriptions of the property, and listing agent and firm.

Business research from more than 3,000 academic / peer-reviewed journals, 2,000 trade publications, and 400 popular press business magazines. Topics covered include leadership, management, economics, banking, finance, accounting and much more.

In Addition non-journal material includes:

• industry and market research reports (from publishers including Business Monitor International and First Research)
• reports on the overall  business and economic climate in Countries (from publishers including Oxford Economics, Economist Intelligence Unit)
• business dissertations
• working papers

This database is good for finding articles published in more than 13,000 popular and academic journals covering many academic subject areas including business, economics, public policy, other social sciences, the humanities, and general sciences. There is some form of full text (html text or PDFs) availability for nearly 9,000 of those journals.

Includes more than 1,200 national and international sources of information on accounting, taxes and taxation, the financial services industry, banking trends, products, companies, issues and operations. Sources include academic / peer-reviewed journals, trade journals, industry reports, conference proceedings, and dissertations.

An image database of more than 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Ad*Access concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II, providing a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies through images preserved in one particular advertising collection available at Duke University. 

The advertisements are from the J. Walter Thompson Company Competitive Advertisements Collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History in Duke University’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library. (Source Vendor Website)

A collection of downloadable real estate financial models, along with information on careers, education, and networking in “commercial real estate.”

Circulation statistics for newspapers and magazines in North America and some International locations. Offers Circulation Audit Reports, Publisher’s Statements and analysis tools in pdf format. Prior three years only. UNC does not subscribe to all online reports.

The American Housing Survey is among the most comprehensive surveys of the U.S. Housing conditions and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Data available includes: National and metropolitan data on residential vacancies, number of rooms, rents, mobile homes, median value of home and occupancy demographics.

Discover information on any topic from the UNC library collections using simple search technology powered by Summon. Use Articles+ to find:

• Scholarly journal articles
• News articles, material from non-scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers
• Ebook content, both whole Ebooks and chapters in Ebooks
• Dissertations from UNC and other universities

Just enter your search terms in the search boxes and use the options below to screen to refine your search by content format, discipline, and language.

Detailed audit information on over 1,200 accounting firms and 15,000 publicly registered companies. Determine who is auditing whom and how much they are paying for what services. You may create targeted reports by auditor, fees, location, industry, client revenue, market capital, changes in auditors, and much more. Coverage in most of the modules is for the years 2000 to the present.

Audit Analytics is accessed through a Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) account.

Special Note: WRDS accounts will only be generated for current faculty, currently enrolled students (Ph.D., masters, and undergraduate), and selected current staff of UNC-Chapel Hill.

To fill out an on-line account request form go to https://wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu/ and click on the “Register” tab in the upper right portion of the screen.

BCC Research provides global market research reports. Reports are typically very detailed and cover market intelligence, five-year forecasting, statistical and analytical data, key players, market share, industry structure and dynamics, and technology trends and shifts. These reports can be well over 100 pages long.  Industries covered include:

Provides detailed industry analysis and market research reports on more than 5,000 lines of business, as defined by NAICS codes, in national and local markets. Types of reports include:
-Industry Financial Profiles: average 15 pages and include financial statement data and more than 30 industry financial ratios both aggregate industry wide and segmented by sales volume .
-Market Research Reports average 10 pages and includes business and market trends, failure rates, sales per employee, and more for both U.S. national level and local level for 250 metro areas.

This database provides access to current (real time ) and historical (about 20 years) of financial, economic, and political news and information covering all sectors of the world’s economy.

Special Note: Because of License Restrictions, Bloomberg access is limited to several computers in the Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Capital Markets Lab (room 2550) in the McColl Building and on 1 computer in the Technology Center (room 1130) on the 1st floor also in the McColl Building.

Provides a series of reports covering residential replacement cost estimates, risk analysis and other property valuation information. Some information is free some you yave to pay for.

BoardEx is an extensive collection of data on board of directors of publicly listed companies in all regions of the world. The companies included are divided into 4 regions (United Kingdom, Europe (excluding United Kingdom, North America (U.S and Canada), and The Rest of the World).  The data is further divided into 7 reports “Individual Profile”, “Compensation Analysis”, “Committee Details”, “Company Profile”, “Networks / Associations”, and “Announcements.”

 The years of coverage depends upon the data set. The publishers of BoardEx began gathering data in 1999 but some data gathered goes back as far as available. For example, the director’s profiles will include employment history for as far back as information is available. For data that is presented on an annual basis such as compensation, committee details, and organization summary, the information can go back as far as 1999 but it depends upon whether or not the company was in existence at that time and upon whether or not publishers of BoardEx fully analyzed the company at that time since our database grew and expanded every year since they started.

BoardEx is accessed through a Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) account.

Special Note: WRDS accounts will only be generated for current faculty, currently enrolled students (Ph.D., masters, and undergraduate), and selected current staff of UNC-Chapel Hill.

To fill out an on-line account request form go to https://wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu/ and click on the “Register” tab in the upper right portion of the screen.

Contains about 500 sample business plans organized by broad categories. You can also search for plans by keywords. There is also information and advice on writing your business plan, starting, funding, and growing your business.

A collection of 26 guides of best business resources covering specific business related topics. Topics include accounting,  advertising & marketing, electronic commerce, human resource management and more. Each guide provides an annotated “listing of significant sites that are themselves content rich in nature. The resources may be free and open access or may be subscription based.

The resources are selected and compiled by the named librarians who are members of the Business Reference and Services Section of the American Library Association.

Home sale predictions and information for the home building industry and vital economic statistics for the home building industry.

This is a major statistics site! You can find all kinds of international, national, regional and industry economic and performance statistics including GDP, balance of payments, national income, personal income and outlays, trade in goods and services, foreign direct investment, and dozens more.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the U.S. Department of Labor, compiles a massive amounts of information and statistics on employment, productivity, inflation, consumer spending, wages, earnings aspects of the U.S. economy.

Information to help Canadians start, manage, and grow their businesses.

This is a series of E-Books available through the UNC-CH online catalog.  Each volume is a compilation of actual business plans developed by small businesses throughout North America.  There are 23 Volumes.

A series of Web pages maintained by Nancy Lovas the Entrepreneurship and Business Librarian at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Davis Library. There are guides for Accounting, Banking, Companies, Industry / Market Research, and more.

Business Source Premier provides Indexing, abstracting and the full-text of articles from more than 1,700 popular press and trade publications, and from more than 1,800 peer-reviewed business journals. Topics covered include leadership, management, economics, banking, finance, accounting and much more. Coverage varies depending on journal, in many cases back to the first issue published of a journal. This resource is the only place to find the full-text and/or “page image” of articles from the Harvard Business Review.

In Addition there is full text of non-journal content that includes 2,200+ market research reports, 18,000+ industry reports, 1,600+ country reports, 17,000+ company profiles, 3,000+ SWOT analyses, 6,000+ executive interviews, 900+ books, and 1,300+ working papers.

A great source Information about industries and corporations. Business news headlines are grouped by hour of the day. Business Wire is also good for finding the Full text of news and press releases from major U.S. corporations, including many Fortune 1000 and NASDAQ companies. Free registration is required to view full text.

Special Note: For UNC – Chapel Hill users, Business Wire is also included in Factiva and Nexis Uni..

Directories of publishing opportunities in a wide range of academic areas including accounting, economics and finance, management, and marketing. Each journal entry includes submission guidelines, circulation data, review and contact information, and acceptance/rejection rates for selected journals.

Articles spanning Canadian agriculture, business and economics, education, government and politics, health sciences, history, literature, medical sciences, social sciences, and more. Includes content form scholarly journals, trade publications, popular press magazines, transcripts from radio and television  programs, and more.

More than 500 current and historical Canadian newspapers from Canada’s leading publishers. Most include full access to the articles, columns, editorials and features. Coverage varies but many include the complete available electronic back file for the newspaper.

Candid was formed by the merger of the Foundation Center and GuideStar. The mission of Candid is to “Give you the information you need to do good.” From their web page the description of “What we do”  reads “Every year, millions of nonprofits spend trillions of dollars around the world. Candid finds out where that money comes from, where it goes, and why it matters. Through research, collaboration, and training, Candid connects people who want to change the world to the resources they need to do it. Candid’s data tools on nonprofits, foundations, and grants are the most comprehensive in the world. Foundation Center and GuideStar joined forces to become Candid, a 501c3 nonprofit organization.”

The organization collects, organizes, and communicates information on U.S. philanthropy, conducts and facilitates research on trends in the field, and provides education and training on the Grantseeking process. Most information is free, some is available only by subscription.

Capital IQ allows users to search for and screen for information on companies including in-depth financial information on publicly traded companies, information on investment firms, biographical information on corporate professionals, and transactions in both the public and private capital markets by a very wide range of company identification data, financial statement data, executive’s biographical characteristics, and deal or transaction specifics. 

Information can be exported to Excel.

The Capital IQ platform, in various forms, is deployed at over 1,800 investment banks, hedge/mutual funds, PE/VC firms, management consultancies, and Fortune 500 corporations. (Source Vendor Web site)

Special Note: Because of licensing restrictions:

Access to Capital IQ is restricted to current faculty, staff, and students of UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School.

Users MUST use their @kenan-flagler.unc.edu email address when requesting an account.

Users MUST access through UNC Kenan-Flagler  Research Tools & Library Resources web page. https://kenanflaglerresearchtools.web.unc.edu/research-resource/capital-iq-kenan-flagler-only/ DO NOT bookmark the S&P Capital IQ login page

Users will be required to enter their UNC onyen from both on-campus and off-campus. Then users will be able to enter their Capital IQ user id and password.

If you have any questions please contact Researchtools@kenan-flagler.unc.edu.

CB Insights is a database that provides information and independent analysis of private companies in a wide range of industries. The information is collected from a wide range of print and electronic sources and is supplemented by interviews and independent analysis. There is a special focus on the financing, and mergers and acquisitions of these companies through private investors and venture capital and private equity firms. Students, faculty and staff can now register for an account and access CB Insights

Special Note: Students, faculty and staff must register and set up an account using a valid UNC Chapel Hill email address to access CB Insights.

Special Note: Each user is limited to 4,000 lines of downloading per year.

There are links here to many newspapers, magazines and broadcast media web pages covering general and business news. There are also links to financial markets, company and industry research, statistics, government and legal web sites. CEOExpress is clearly laid out and very easy to navigate.

The Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is the codification of the general and permanent rules published in the Federal Register by the executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government. It is divided into 50 titles that represent broad areas subject to Federal regulation. Each volume of the CFR is updated once each calendar year and is issued on a quarterly basis. Each title is divided into chapters, which usually bear the name of the issuing agency. Each chapter is further subdivided into parts that cover specific regulatory areas. Large parts may be subdivided into subparts. All parts are organized in sections, and most citations in the CFR are provided at the section level.

Free quarterly reports on economic activity especially on commercial property industry. Includes reports on city, national and international markets. Also contains commercial property listings.

A database for effective executive compensation analyses. Execucomp contains more than 100 up-to-date salary, bonus, and stock option data along with company identification items that can be used to match the top executives’ compensation data with company financial data found in the Compustat North America database. Data is available from 1992 forward.

Log in to your WRDS account and Click on “Compustat – Capital IQ” then on “Execucomp”

Compustat Execucomp is accessed through a Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) account.

Special Note: WRDS accounts will only be generated for current faculty, currently enrolled students (Ph.D., masters, and undergraduate), and selected current staff of UNC-Chapel Hill.

To fill out an on-line account request form go to https://wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu/ and click on the “Register” tab in the upper right portion of the screen.

Annual and quarterly of data for hundreds of data items, ratios and concepts. Authoritative financial and market data covering publicly traded companies in more than 80 countries, representing over 90% of the world’s market capitalization, including coverage of over 96% of European market capitalization and 88% of Asian market capitalization. Data sets have been designed to reflect the varieties of actual reporting practices used across the globe, while allowing for minimal normalization and establishing consistency on an item by item basis for Non-North American companies. Data sourcing through alliances with two leading, local information providers in Asia-Pacific enhances Compustat coverage in this region demonstrating accurate accounting interpretation and expediency.

Compustat Global is accessed through a Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) account.

Special Note: WRDS accounts will only be generated for current faculty, currently enrolled students (Ph.D., masters, and undergraduate), and selected current staff of UNC-Chapel Hill.

To fill out an on-line account request form go to https://wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu/ and click on the “Register” tab in the upper right portion of the screen.

Data includes more than 20 years of annual and 84 quarters of financial data on more than 10,000 companies that are currently in business. The database also includes 20 years of annual financial data for 8,500 companies that are bankrupt, went private, no longer report, or were liquidated. There are also 900 Canadian companies listed in the database. COMPUSTAT is intended solely for research and instructional purposes.

Compustat North America is accessed through a Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) account.

Special Note: WRDS accounts will only be generated for current faculty, currently enrolled students (Ph.D., masters, and undergraduate), and selected current staff of UNC-Chapel Hill.

To fill out an on-line account request form go to https://wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu/ and click on the “Register” tab in the upper right portion of the screen.

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S&P Capital IQ’s Compustat Snapshot, researchers get a clear picture of preliminary and final data for annual, quarterly and year-to-date periods, minimizing lag assumptions and look-ahead bias. The database creates a historical investment environment by showing the information that was available at specific time points in history, with data values known by the market from preliminary announcements and final sources. Dates of coverage are 1968 to the present.

The University’s subscription includes research reports, executive summaries on key business topics, surveys, and case studies of the world’s most influential companies. Coverage is back to the late 1990’s or early 2000 for the most part. However the UNC-Chapel Hill library may have purchased individual reports from before that time. For UNC-Chapel Hill holdings of earlier reports, previous issues of various publications, and other Conference Board publications not found in this database, consult the UNC-Chapel Hill online library catalog.

This web site is great for finding information on U.S. Congressional legislative activity. You can find information on and the full-text of bills, committee meetings, roll call votes, and many other activities and issues that the U.S. Congress debates and act on. Information goes back to 1995.

Congressional budget office has a variety of economic and budgetary forecasts, projections, and historical data for the US economy and the Federal budget.

The Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) is a private, non-profit organization formed in 1984 to identify, enable and promote high growth, high impact entrepreneurial companies and to accelerate the entrepreneurial culture of the Research Triangle and North Carolina.

(source Organization Web site)

Country Commercial Guides (CCG’s) are prepared annually by U.S. embassies with the assistance of several U.S. government agencies, and they use economic, political and market analysis to give an in-depth look at the commercial environment in various countries. There’s a wealth of information here.

An annual series that provides subnational economic data by industry. The series is useful for studying the economic activity of small areas; analyzing economic changes over time; and as a benchmark for statistical series, surveys, and databases between economic censuses. Businesses use the data for analyzing market potential, measuring the effectiveness of sales and advertising programs, setting sales quotas, and developing budgets. (source Census website)

Craftsman National Appraisal Estimator (formerly Building-Cost.net)  A valuation software to produce estimates of home construction, renovation, and replacement cost estimates including materials, design, quality, size, shape, heating, cooling, and geographic area. This is NOT a free resource.

CRSP Indices there are almost 1000 time series in this data set, covering both levels and returns for various markets and portfolio types. The database provides stock indices, beta- and cap-based portfolios, Treasury bond and risk-free rates of return on daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis for the NYSE and AMEX from 1925 to the present and from 1972 for Nasdaq markets.

CRSP Indicies is accessed through a Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) account.

Special Note: WRDS accounts will only be generated for current faculty, currently enrolled students (Ph.D., masters, and undergraduate), and selected current staff of UNC-Chapel Hill.

To fill out an on-line account request form go to https://wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu/ and click on the “Register” tab in the upper right portion of the screen.

A wealth of longitudinal price, return, volume, and other information for stocks on the NYSE, AMEX and Nasdq markets. Also available is return, volume, other and information on the NYSE, AMEX and Nasdq Market Indices. CRSP is intended solely for research and instructional purposes.

CRSP Stocks is accessed through a Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) account.

Special Note: WRDS accounts will only be generated for current faculty, currently enrolled students (Ph.D., masters, and undergraduate), and selected current staff of UNC-Chapel Hill.

To fill out an on-line account request form go to https://wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu/ and click on the “Register” tab in the upper right portion of the screen.

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The CRSP Mutual Fund Database is designed to facilitate research on the historical performance of open-ended mutual funds by using survivor-bias-free data. The CRSP Survivor-Bias-Free US Mutual Fund Database includes a history of each mutual fund’s name, investment style, fee structure, holdings, and asset allocation. Also included are monthly total returns, monthly total net assets, monthly/daily net asset values, and dividends. Additionally schedules of rear and front load fees, asset class codes, and management company contact information are provided. All data items are for open-end mutual funds and begin at varying times between 1962 and 2003 depending on availability. The database is updated quarterly and distributed with a quarterly lag. (Source Vendor Website) CRSP is intended solely for research and instructional purposes.

CRSP Survivor-Bias Free U.S. Mutual Fund Database is accessed through a Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS) account.

Special Note: WRDS accounts will only be generated for current faculty, currently enrolled students (Ph.D., masters, and undergraduate), and selected current staff of UNC-Chapel Hill.

To fill out an on-line account request form go to https://wrds-www.wharton.upenn.edu/ and click on the “Register” tab in the upper right portion of the screen.