A Real-Time Data Set for Macroeconomists

The data set consists of vintages, or snapshots, of the major macroeconomic data available at quarterly intervals in real time. The paper illustrates why such data may matter, explains the construction of the data set, examines the properties of several of the variables in the data set across vintages, examines key empirical papers in macroeconomics and investigates their robustness to different vintages, looks at how policy analysis may be affected by data revisions, and shows how forecasts can be affected by data revisions.