Welcome to FRASER®

Mission

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.

History

Providing economic data to the public has historically been an important mission for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Quality economic research requires empirical work that focuses on hard data to support an argument. Modern theoretical models of economic activity, particularly models of the macroeconomy and the impact of fiscal and monetary policies, emphasize the role of expectational forces. Expectations are formed on information known at the point-in-time, not on the revised information that becomes available after the fact. To implement this type of model, it is necessary to have access to data points that are indexed in two dimensions: the point-in-time at which the data are published and the period of time to which the observation applies.

Every Federal Reserve Bank gathers data. What makes the St. Louis Fed unique is that we also publish data. It was an economic debate between Monetarists and Keynesians over what controlled inflation that originally resulted in the publication of data. The St. Louis Fed played a large role in arguing this debate, and economic data was an important tool. Many economists at the St. Louis Fed were Monetarists. Monetarists believe that the money supply is an important measure/indicator of the economy and that the supply of money directly influences inflation. The St. Louis Fed has been famous for its advocacy of Monetarism, which was counter to what most of the economists at the Board of Governors and other Federal Reserve Banks thought.

With a monetarist focus and the emphasis on empirical work came a focus on economic data. Today, we understand that data is vital to empirical research in economics and policy analysis. We continue the 40 year tradition in institutionalizing empirical approaches to economic research by providing timely data series in two ways —as the publication (a scanned document via FRASER) and as a database with data points and release date (ALFRED).

Scope

FRASER® consists of an open archive of economic statistical publications and data within an automated system to retrieve both images and data. Within the archive is an image library of economic statistical publications and the data extracted from those publications. The database is designed to retain information linking each data point to its source publication, including the date of publication. The automated data retrieval system has been developed to allow users to select any desired subset of FRASER’s images and data.

When used in connection with data contained in FRED® (Federal Reserve Economic Data) and ALFRED® (Archival Federal Reserve Data), FRASER® allows the researcher to create uninterrupted data series by accessing sources previously available only in printed form and those currently available electronically (on FRED® and ALFRED®). In addition, the ability to retrieve series presented in preliminary, revised, and final releases provides a powerful tool in recreating and evaluating previous economic research and policy.

Collections

There are two kinds of documents on FRASER®

DATA PUBLICATIONS from U. S. government agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, and others more specialized, like the Board of Governor’s Statistical Releases.

HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS Archival material and special collections, including Monetary Policy Hearings, Public Statements of the Presidents of the St. Louis Fed, Statements of the Chairman of the Board of Governors, archival material from economic policymakers, and special collections: source materials from Allan Meltzer’s A History of the Federal Reserve, Vol. 1, the papers from the Brookings Institute’s Committee on the History of the Federal Reserve, and the papers of William McChesney Martin, Jr.

Technical Process

The historical economic data publications in FRASER® are included in an electronic archive of government publications being created through a nationwide collaborative effort of librarians. Each of the publications collected by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has been scanned using either a flatbed, planetary, or automatic document feed scanner into a high-resolution, 300- to 600-dpi tag(ged) image file (TIFF). Documents are then cleaned of unprinted marks and run through an optical character recognition (OCR) software application that images the file, introduces metadata, and converts the file to Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Documents are then secured to prevent copying of data and text. Since the OCR is 99% accurate and uncorrected, copying and pasting data directly from a table may lead to inaccuracies.

We invite you to explore these documents. Please contact us if you would like to discuss collaborating on an appropriate digitization project or have documents you like to contribute.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the assistance from the Federal Depository Library program libraries, as well as the following libraries:

Brookings Institute
Creighton University
Denison University
Everett Public Library
Federal Reserve Bank libraries
Indiana University, Bloomington, Wells Library
Kansas City Public Library
Library of Michigan
Long Island University
Missouri Historical Society
Missouri State University
Norwich University
Saint Louis University
Saint Louis University School of Law
St. Louis Public Library
University of Missouri—Columbia
University of Missouri—Kansas City
University of Missouri—St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis