Partnership merges finance data, fuels academic research collaboration.

The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy’s Center for Municipal Finance has partnered with Investortools to provide more data on the municipal finance sector to academics. The partnership will connect researchers looking to publish in scholarly journals with data points gathered by Investortools and chosen by the center, which will also adjust its data points based on feedback from researchers. The partnership gives academics access to Investortools data at lower pricing and allows the center to handle administrative work and vet researchers. The Harris School partnership is already producing results, with researchers using Investortools data to examine the impact of natural disasters on the fiscal health of cities and counties, as well as researching nonprofit hospitals and their debt loads. The goal is to make the Center for Municipal Finance a premier destination for municipal finance researchers and a repository for private sector data in the industry.