Resources of Economic Data

Resources of Economic Data

There are many different resources that can be used to retrieve historical economic data as well as forecast future economic data. The resources are both useful and valuable when looking into these types of data as they have a wide range of information. Some of the main resources that can be used for this are the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED), the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) is a database containing an array time-series compiled by the Federal Reserve. The time-series contains financial data that includes banking, business, gross domestic product, exchange and interest rates, reserves and monetary base exchange rates, consumer price indexes, producer price indexes, and more. Because of its significant amount of historical data it provides to the public, FRED is a significant resource to those attempting to gather economic data and economic forecast data. The FRED database provides useful and user-friendly tools such as charts, which can be pulled up within seconds. Such tools provide quantitative forecasting abilities since they have such a large amount of historical data accessible to them by a click of a button. The information that is provided through FRED is also valuable as because there are many different documents to choosee from, which are dated so one is able to find the most up to date information.

BEA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce along with the Census Bureau; BEA is part of the Department's Economics and Statistics Administration. The data produced by the BEA provides "a comprehensive, up-to-date picture of the U.S. economy" (Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2013) making it a valuable qualitative forecasting tool. According to Investopedia, "the BEA publishes an advance release of quarterly GDP four weeks after the quarter ends, and a final release three months after the quarter ends” (Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2013). Through these reports, the government can utilize BEA statistics when making critical decisions on fiscal, monetary, and tax policies while businesses and the common public can utilize the data to make investment decisions. The information provided by the BEA's national, regional, industry,