OK, it was a party that skewed pretty heavily to librarians, but there was one lone economist there who gave me this terrific resource…
Economic Research at the St. Louis Federal Reserve
It’s a terrific site with wide ranging data–US, international, time series–often with normalization over time, historical economic data, and downloads in a variety of formats…what’s not to love. They’ve even got social media via the FRED network.
I’ve been sharing it with our Economics students and others who have found it helpful. I hope that you find something to love about the site as well.
All blurbs lifted from their site –just to be clear –this is cut and paste, FRED wrote it, I’m just sharing.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is the center of the Eighth District of the Federal Reserve System. The Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is responsible for advising the Bank president on matters of economic policy. The Division monitors the economic and financial literature and produces research in the areas of money and banking, macroeconomics, and international and regional economics.
A diverse group of Bank publications allows the Research Division to address quickly changing economic trends, explore the relevance of historical and current data for economic policy, and expand the understanding of issues relevant to the Eighth District and beyond.
The Research Division also furnishes its working papers to provide insight into current Bank interests and developing theories and to stimulate discussion.
This site offers a wealth of economic data and information to promote economic education and enhance economic research. The widely used database FRED is updated regularly and allows 24/7 access to regional and national financial and economic data.
Which doesn’t do justice to all that they offer—
FRED® (Federal Reserve Economic Data), a database of 21,432 U.S. economic time series. With FRED® you can download data in Microsoft Excel and text formats and view charts of data series.
ALFRED® (ArchivaL Federal Reserve Economic Data) aka Economic Data Time Travel from the St. Louis Fed’s Economic Research Division.
ALFRED® allows you to retrieve vintage versions of economic data that were available on specific dates in history. In general, economic data for past observation periods are revised as more accurate estimates become available. As a result, previous vintages of data can be superseded and may no longer be available from various data sources. Vintage or real time economic data allows academics to reproduce others’ research, build more accurate forecasting models, and analyze economic policy decisions using the data available at the time.
GeoFRED® is a web application that allows users to create thematic maps of U.S. economic data for geographies including states, counties, and metropolitan statistical areas. Maps can be created from over 12,000 regional data series available in the FRED® database. Regional data series include civilian labor force, residential population, and unemployment rate. Various tools allow users to customize and print these maps.
Liber8® — an economic information portal. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Research Department librarians designed this site with university and government document librarians, students, and the general public in mind. Economic information can, at times, be difficult for the non-economist to find and understand. We hope this site will provide a single point of access to the economic information that the Federal Reserve System, other government agencies, and data providers have to offer. We specifically selected non-technical sources that would be simpler to use and easier to understand.
Liber8® is provided by the Research “Lib”rary of the “8”th Federal Reserve District.
FRASER® The Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research (FRASER®) is a unique project of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ Center for Economic Documents Digitization (CEDD), which seeks to preserve the nation’s economic history through digitization. Further, FRASER® contributes to the long-standing mission of the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: to provide timely and convenient data to scholars, analysts, students and interested observers of the U.S. economy.
Empirical economic research depends on economic data, especially data published by governments. Such data presents two difficulties for researchers. First, certain government documents can be difficult to locate, particularly older volumes, special issues associated with benchmarks or major revisions, and long sequences of issues. Second, published figures frequently are revised by their issuers. FRASER® is designed to address both of these issues.
CASSIDI strives to be the one-stop shop for your banking competition information needs. CASSIDI contains information for the entire country and is updated regularly. Through CASSIDI, you will be able to search for and view banking market definitions, find banking market concentrations, and perform “what if” (pro forma) analyses on banking market structures.
CASSIDI also offers an array of mapping options, enabling you, for example, to view banking market boundaries, find depository institutions, and compare market concentrations across banking markets. (These features are currently being developed.)
