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As It Happened:
Economic Data and
Publications as
Snapshots in Time
Robert Rasche
Katrina Stierholz
Robert Suriano
Julie Knoll

First
colu
mn

Last
colu
mn

First observation

11-Jan-66

24-Sep-04

Jan-48

Exports of Goods and Services Constant

Jan-66

24-Sep-04

Mar-47

Exports of Goods and Services Current

Jan-66

1-May-04

Mar-46

Government Purchases of Goods and Services, Constant

Jan-66

1-Mar-04

Mar-47

Government Purchases of Goods and Services, Current

Jan-66

1-Mar-04

Mar-46

Gross Domestic Product, Constant Prices

Jan-66

1-Mar-04

Mar-47

Gross Domestic Product, Current Prices

Jan-66

1-Mar-04

Mar-46

Gross Private Domestic Investment, Constant

Jan-66

1-May-04

Mar-47

Gross Private Domestic Investment, Current

Jan-66

1-May-04

Mar-46

Imports of Goods and Services, Constant

Jan-66

1-Jun-04

Mar-47

Imports of Goods and Services, Current

Jan-66

1-Jun-04

Mar-46

Industrial Production

May-27

1-Jan-04

Jan-19

Output per Man Hour, Business Sector

Jun-68

1-Jun-04

Mar-47

Output per Man Hour, Nonfarm Business Sector

Jun-68

1-Jun-04

Mar-47

17-Jan-66

24-Sep-04

Jan-39

PCE, Constant

Jan-66

1-Aug-99

Mar-47

PCE, Current

Jan-66

1-Aug-99

Mar-46

19-Jan-66

1-May-04

Jan-46

Monthly Personal Income, Real

Nov-76

Sep-04

Jan-48

Monthly Disposable Personal Income, Constant

Jan-79

Sep-04

Jan-48

Monthly Disposable Personal Income

Jan-79

Sep-04

Jan-48

17-Jan-66

1-Aug-99

Jan-47

Unit Labor Costs, Private Business Sector

Jun-68

2-Jul-04

Mar-47

Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales

Nov-76

Sep-04

Jan-48

Series Name
Civilian Employment

Payroll Employment

Monthly Personal Income, Nominal

Retail Sales, Nominal

Federal Reserve System
Board of Governors
 Federal Reserve Banks




12 different banks

Why St. Louis?
Homer Jones
 Monetarists/Keynesians
 Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Review
 Empirical data


Data publications produced








Triangles of US Economic Data (monthly,
Jan 1966-May 1967)
Triangles of US Economic Data: Quarterly
Supplement (Jan 1966-May 1967)
USFD (weekly, January 1966- )
Monetary Trends (monthly, June 1967- )
National Economic Trends (monthly, August
1967 - )

Electronic Data, and other
problems
FRED
 Library issues
 Archived data


Economic Data at STLFRB
Data publications
 FRED
 FRASER






Development & process
Where we are

Future projects

Data Publications






Economic Publications
 Regional Economist, Review
Statistical Reports
 Monetary Trends, National Economic Trends,
International Economic Trends, US Financial Data
Federal Reserve System Reports
 Beige Book, Industrial Production & Capacity
Utilization, Minutes of the FOMC

http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/

FRED



Over 3,000 economic time-series
Data from Department of Labor, Department of Census,
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Office of
Management and Budget



Data accessible in flat text (ASCII), spreadsheet (MS Excel)



Data graphically displayed online



Email notification when updated



http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/

FRASER








Electronic archive of historic economic statistical
publications
All Bank Statistics, Annual Statistical Digest, Banking and
Monetary Statistics, Economic Indicators, Productivity and
Costs
Future additions include Business Conditions Digest and the
Economic Report of the President
Extension of data series available on FRED

http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/

FRASER workflow
Publication

Scanner

TIFF files

File cleaning

OCR

Original
TIFF files

Archive

PDF files

http://fraser.stlouisfed.org

Image Preparation
(File Cleaning)


Removal of non-published marks and
imperfections
Imaging imperfections
 Misalignment
 Handwritten notations and highlighting
 Library stamps


FRASER Production Status
Total pages scanned: 72,923
Total pages cleaned: 45,807
Total hours: 563*
Cost per completed (scanned & cleaned) page: $0.08*
* June – October 2004

Future Projects
Metadata
Increase the usefulness of FRASER

ALFRED
Archival library of real-time economic and
financial data

Union Catalog
Information and direct links to economic
resources

Scanning and Preparation
Tools
Kodak i260 document scanner
 Kodak Capture Software
 ScanSoft PaperPort
 ABBYY FineReader


OCR Considerations
• Quality of original
• Printed text size
• Scanning resolution vs. file size
Business Statistics, 100%

Business Statistics, 400%

• Accuracy
• Protect users from using erroneous data

PDF Security
Password security
 Restricted documents






Opening
Editing
Printing

Disable copying of text, images, and
other content
 Enable text access for screen reader
devices


Website Software
Red Hat Linux
 Apache
 PostgreSQL
 PHP
 PDFLib+PDI


PostgreSQL
Chosen over MySQL
 Advanced features






Transactions
Foreign key relationships
Other (Subqueries, Views, Stored
Procedures)

PDFLib+PDI
Extension to PHP
 Dynamic PDF generation
 Modify existing PDFs
 Used for single page downloads and
grouped page files


Back-Up Procedures
CVS (Concurrent Versions System)
 Database Dump Files
 Tape backups
 Contingency servers
 Hard drive failover
 Original file archive


Data Entry – Administration
Web Forms

Technical Information Websites


Kodak Document Scanner:
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/dpq/site/TKX/name/DocumentScanners_product



Kodak Capture Software
http://www.kodak.com/US/en/dpq/site/TKX/name/CaptureSoftware_Product



Fujitsu Scanners: http://www.fujitsu.ca/products/imaging/



ScanSoft PaperPort: http://www.scansoft.com/paperport/



ABBYY FineReader: http://www.abbyy.com/finereader/



Red Hat Linux: http://www.redhat.com



Apache: http://httpd.apache.org



PostgreSQL: http://www.postgresql.org



PHP: http://www.php.net



PDFLib+PDI: http://www.pdflib.com

For more
information
http://fraser.stlouisfed.org