Federal Reserve Economic Data Katrina Stierholz

Manager, Research LibraryFederal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

June 26, 2006

Note: the views expressed are mine and do not necessarily represent official positions of the Federal Reserve System.

A little bit about the Fed

• The Federal Reserve Banks are NOT government institutions. And, each bank is an independent own institution.

• However, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve IS part of the Federal government

• The Banks have three functions—Banking Supervision (under the direction of the BOG), Financial Services, and Monetary Policy

Federal Reserve Banks

Many routes to finding data

• Liber8 (Librarian’s Resource for Economic Information)

• FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data)

• ALFRED (Archival FRED—data files)

• FRASER (Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research—image files)

Liber8—an economic portal for librarians

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Search by keyword for research from Federal Reserve Banks and the Board of Governors.

Full-text available, and always free!

Coming Soon!

An issue devoted to a major public finance issue: Federal Credit and Insurance Programs

Click on one of the items, and it opens the link in a new window

FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data)

• Updated several times a day• Over 3,000 economic time-series• Data from Dept. of Labor, Census, Board of

Governors of the Federal Reserve, OMB• Data accessible in text (ASCII) or Excel format• Charts (and these can be modified)• Email notification when updated• Can download multiple data sets (or the whole

thing)• Regional data maps

2 ways to find data…

Search for deficit

Note the Units

Drill down through categories

Download in Excel

The current budgetdeficit is less than four percent of GDP. Less thansome years in the 1980’s.

This looks likewe have the worst deficit in history. Which we do, in dollars. But, our economy is much bigger now.

ALFRED• First, Second, Final, and Benchmark Revisions• 20/20 hindsight • Much more sophisticated (interface and user)• 2,349 data series have vintage/archival data• Earliest vintage date is 1927. The major series

will have their vintage data posted as far back as we can gather.

ALFRED, FRED’s Older Brother

Q1:2004 GDP Revisions

• April 29, 2004: First quarter “advance” GDP is issued (increased 4.2%)

• May 27, 2004: First quarter “preliminary” GDP is issued (increased 4.4%)

• June 25, 2004: First quarter “final” GDP is issued (increased 3.9%)

• July 30, 2004: First quarter GDP is revised to 4.5% (as part of the annual revision)

• July 2005: the next annual revision comes out, now it’s 4.3% … and did I mention benchmarks?

Database construction

• Time as a feature (Snodgrass book)• Data point

– Time interval– Validity interval

• Only twice as many data points as current FRED database.

• May be a useful construct for other electronic products (anything that changes)

FRASER

• Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research

• Scanned publications, either from the federal government or from the Federal Reserve System. All Bank Statistics, Annual Statistical Digest, Banking and Monetary Statistics, Economic Indicators, Business Conditions Digest, Economic Report of the President

• Continues our focus on data, increasing our visibility• Future additions include the Federal Reserve Bulletin,

Federal Open Market Committee Minutes/Transcripts, Congressional Hearings with a Monetary Policy focus, and Employment and Earnings.

Historical Publications on FRASER

• Humphrey-Hawkins hearings

• Economic Report of the President

• Archival material– Meltzer’s A History of the Federal Reserve,

vol. 1– William McChesney Martin speeches

Archival Material on FRASER

• Meltzer’s book, A History of the Federal Reserve, Vol. 1– Variety of resources (journals, working papers,

hearings, unpublished materials, BOG minutes, a few books)

– 308 references, 2,622 citations/footnotes, 61 documents scanned

– Over 60% of the material will be scanned and in the archive

– MODs schema for metadata– Shared taxonomy with all other projects (FRED,

FRASER, etc.)

What’s next?

• More on ALFRED (more vintage data, further back)

• GEOFRED (a mapping tool to work with FRED)• More titles on FRASER

– Employment & Earnings– Federal Reserve Bulletin– Federal Open Market Committee minutes

• New archival material– William McChesney Martin, Jr. papers– Broookings Papers

What would you like to see?

• We have changed our chart display at the suggestion of a user

• We are open to making changes or improvements or additions…

• How can we improve Liber8?

Questions?

Katrina Stierholz

stierholz@stls.frb.org

314-444-8552 (phone)

314-444-8694 (fax)