The Federal Reserve Economic Database

Background  The Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) is maintained by a division with in the St. Louis Federal Reserve bank, one of 12 Federal Reserve Banks in the nation  This Research Division is responsible for advising the bank president on policy  This division also monitors economic and financial literature and produces research in a wide variety of fields

Data Collection  FRED accesses their data through both public and private sources, foreign and domestic  Includes: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Census, IMF. FFIEC, NBER many colleges and universities, private banks, British Bankers Association, Bank of Japan, and even the Highway Association  The Federal reserve uses reporting forms to collect data from many different types of entities, sometimes required and sometimes voluntary  Applicable data is then available to the Research Division to analyze and work with

FRED  Flagship database  More than 292,000 United States and international economic time series from 80 sources  Data can be viewed in graphical and text form  Can be downloaded for import to a database or spreadsheet  Can be viewed on mobile devices

How Data is Categorized  Data is grouped by the source of the data, related categories, and related resources  Data is assigned tags based on multiple qualitative factors such as the source of the data, what economic or financial factor the data concerns, and key words associated with the data

Data Manipulation with FRED  Data can be:  Viewed and downloaded in a text format  Can be exported into excel or power point  Made into a line or bar graph, scatterplot or pie chart  User-defined formulas and a variety of transformations can be applied to graphs  Graphs can be exported as a PDF, a PNG, a JPG or a SVG

ALFRED  Archival Federal Reserve Economic Data  Vintage data from specific dates in history  graphing customization  allows for units transformations  Unlike FRED, captures each revision of the data  Captures “expired” FRED values

GeoFRED  Data-mapping application for FRED data  Color-codes economic data geographically, by country, state, or nation

CASSIDI  Banking competition analysis  Market boundaries  Market concentrations  “what if” analysis on market structures

FRASER  Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research  Digital archive begun in 2004  Meant to safeguard, preserve, and provide easy access to the United States’ economic history  Digitization of important documents related to the U.S. financial system