Academy Project
Financial and Corporate Research from a Long-Term Perspective
The academy project is carried out by the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (HAdW) and the Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz (AdWL). Goethe University Frankfurt and the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE, in cooperation with the University Mannheim and the University Library Mannheim, use state-of-the-art methods to make historical financial and corporate sources accessible.
GER
German
We focus on the German-speaking region, as the existing coverage is insufficient and long-term financial and corporate research is largely based on US data. At the same time, the historical German documentation requirements promise a large but so far little-used data potential.
HIS
Historical
Historical data help us to better understand past events and developments in the context of their time, to reveal the possible origins of present-day market structures and path dependencies, and to make well-founded statements about future developments based on long time series.
FIN
Financial data
Our financial and corporate data include stock exchange listings, annual reports of all German stock corporations, and patent data. The combination of capital market, corporate, and innovation data enables multifaceted analyses.
Creating Order
Turning unstructured data into research data
The goal of the project is therefore to create structured and interlinked research data with corporate information and financial indicators of German real-economy and financial-sector companies over a long period (from 1871 onwards), to preserve them as part of our cultural heritage, and to use them for financial research up to the present.
Based on this data, a research program is being carried out with a focus on a wide range of topics in financial history and long-term perspective. Due to the particularities of German development during the period under review (fundamental changes in the financial system, hyperinflation and crises), the data provide valuable insights into the challenges of the financial system and economic policy measures.
Acquisition
Source acquisition & digitization
Curation
Text recognition &
structuring
Data Work
Scientific analysis
Opening up historical sources
Digitization, text recognition & structuring
To make historical sources accessible, they first need to be digitized and then converted into digital content using text recognition.
FAIR Datasets
Datasets for everyone
For us, easy access to the data is a central aspect of the project.
Explore our datasets right now.
Scientific work with the data
Exploring the content and sharing insights
Datasets are not relevant as an end in themselves. The point is to explore their content and to put the information in the right context.
What else lies hidden in the data?
Questions or problems?
Feel free to write to us if you have questions or have encountered problems.
Contact us!Participating Institutions
