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Economic Data as Snapshots in Time

Economic Data as Snapshots in Time. Katrina Stierholz Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis IASSIST Conference May 27, 2005. FRED, FRASER, & ALFRED. FRED—economic time series database FRASER—an image archive ALFRED—real time economic time series database. 1Q2004 GDP revisions.

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Economic Data as Snapshots in Time

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  1. Economic Data as Snapshots in Time Katrina Stierholz Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis IASSIST Conference May 27, 2005

  2. FRED, FRASER, & ALFRED • FRED—economic time series database • FRASER—an image archive • ALFRED—real time economic time series database

  3. 1Q2004 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) • June 2005 the next annual revision will be released, revising the number again… and did I mention benchmarks?

  4. Real-Time Data • Represents the data at a particular point in time • Useful for replication studies, forecast models, evaluating policy decisions (historical), understanding the scope of revisions for various data series • First release information available in press releases

  5. Finding old revisions • Press releases • Economic serial publications (e.g., Economic Indicators, Survey of Current Business, and Federal Reserve Bulletin) • They don’t have release dates • But, they do offer a nice “snapshot” view of the economy at a particular moment in time (over the course of a week or month)

  6. FRASER • Images • Part of GPO digitization project • Features • Linked tables • OCRd material • SuDoc numbers added • Searchable • High quality scanning • Low-cost way of providing this information • OCR cannot be extracted (it is uncorrected)

  7. FRASER workflow Publication Scanner TIFF files File cleaning OCR Original TIFF files PDF files Archive http://fraser.stlouisfed.org

  8. ALFRED • Much more sophisticated (interface and user) • Data will go back to December 1996, in the first release (July 2005) • 25 major data series have been gathered back to the beginning of their release

  9. Database construction • Time as a feature (Snodgrass book) • Data point • Time interval • Validity interval • Only twice as many data points as current FRED database. • Will live within FRED, for a while, later it will be a separate site

  10. Library/Librarian Issues • Loss of information in paper • Loss of electronic information • Consider snapshots • Consider sending it to us

  11. http://research.stlouisfed.org Please contact me at: Katrina.L.Stierholz@stls.frb.org

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