Federal Reserve Economic Data
Katrina Stierholz
Manager, Research Library
Federal 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
Drill down through categories
Note the Units
Download in Excel
This looks like
we have the
worst deficit in
history.
Which we do, in
dollars. But, our
economy is much
bigger now.
The current budget
deficit is less than
four percent of
GDP. Less than
some years in the
1980’s.
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)