Commercial Data in Financial Research Available to Purchase

Databases are important but expensive sources for financial research. We examine data sources from 14,087 articles published in finance journals, identify the most common databases and how they impact visibility. We find that 74% of empirical papers rely on at least one common database. The choice of data is skewed towards a couple of heavily used products, even when there are alternatives. This tendency is stronger for articles published in top-5 journals and research from the US and top business schools. Finding that the most common databases results in more citations suggests that data access enhances scrutiny and facilitates research clusters.