Data Entry & Clean Up for Emory University

Challenge

Economic historians at Emory University and Gesellschaft für Kapitalmarktforschung were researching global financial growth throughout history. Their primary sources were English and German newspapers from the late 19th and early 20th century, featuring detailed daily stock tables from both the New York Stock Exchange and the Berlin Stock Exchange. Unfortunately, the quality of the scans, combined with varying table formats and font sizes, hindered automated data extraction, necessitating manual entry.

DDD’s Solution

To address this challenge, the principal investigators partnered with Digital Divide Data (DDD). DDD’s team of experts meticulously captured and verified over two million financial data points from English and German newspapers. The data was then cleaned and normalized to ensure consistency and accuracy, including standardizing abbreviations and names.

Safeguarding millions of historical financial data points for future research

Impact

Thanks to DDD the collaborators were able to successfully complete their analysis of global financial growth. Their findings are anticipated to be published soon, shedding light on historical trends and patterns in the financial markets.