For immediate release
Contact: Sarah Katz, Media Relations
Philadelphia, PA — Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President and CEO Patrick T. Harker spoke to an audience of researchers and economists about the importance of using both historical and current data to understand today’s economy. Harker introduced the Philadelphia Fed’s Center for the REstoration of Economic Data (CREED), which provides the public with digitized versions of historical, previously inaccessible data and innovative methods to conduct timely economic and policy-relevant research.
“What we need more of right now is this proper historic economic perspective. And this is where the CREED effort will really shine,” Harker said in a prepared speech at the From Rasters to Rows: New Methods and Applications in Automated Data Extraction conference hosted by the Philadelphia Fed. “Simply put, the promise of CREED is to use the technology of today to unlock the past — an oftentimes forgotten past.”
CREED converts information in old books, maps, and other analog formats into ready-to-use, publicly available digital data using state-of-the-art machine learning and research expertise from the Philadelphia Fed’s Consumer Finance Institute and Research Department. CREED’s current collection of data feature aspects of the housing market:
- The Historical Housing Prices Project provides new data on the price of housing for sale and for rent over the 20th century using the real estate sections of historical newspapers from 30 major cities.
- The Racial Covenants interactive map shows the use of language added to deeds that prevented non-Whites from buying or renting property in Philadelphia.
CREED plans to expand its digitization efforts to include analog sources that can shed light on a variety of topics such as business formation and the intergenerational transmission of wealth.
About the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia helps formulate and implement monetary policy; supervises state member banks, bank holding companies, and savings and loan holding companies; and provides financial services to depository institutions and the federal government. It is one of the 12 regional Reserve Banks that, together with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia serves eastern and central Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware.