For immediate release
Contact: Rachel Brown, Media Relations Representative, 215-574-3840
Philadelphia, PA — The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Real-Time Data Research Center today released an expanded version of the Philadelphia Fed’s Greenbook Data Set. The data set now covers all projections for selected variables published in the Greenbook by the staff of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors before each meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Previously, the data set focused on the projections that were made around the release dates of the Bank’s quarterly Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF).
“By including every Greenbook published, our data set presents more detailed information concerning Greenbook forecasts and a clearer picture of the current and projected economic state before each FOMC meeting,” said Fatima Mboup, a senior research assistant in the Real-Time Data Research Center. “We think the new data set will provide academic researchers and business analysts with critical information for analyzing past monetary policy decisions. Additionally, the data help quantify differences in forecast accuracy with the private sector projections in the Survey of Professional Forecasters.”
The Philadelphia Fed’s Greenbook Data Set is an Excel-formatted compilation of the economic projections made by the staff at the Board of Governors before each meeting of the FOMC. These projections are made available to the public after a lag of five years. The data set highlights the 15 variables measured by the Bank’s SPF, including real GDP and its components, nominal GDP, inflation, unemployment, industrial production, and housing starts.
The data set has been expanded to include historical values, providing data that describe the economy over the four quarters preceding the forecast period. The historical values offer context for the projections.
The Real-Time Data Research Center is part of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Research Department. The center is a source of knowledge and expertise about real-time macroeconomic data, surveys of macroeconomic forecasts, and macroeconomic modeling. The center produces macroeconometric analyses and collects and maintains a variety of data sets of value to macroeconomists and monetary policymakers, including the real-time data set for macroeconomists, the Livingston Survey, the Survey of Professional Forecasters, the Greenbook data sets, GDPplus, and the Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti business conditions index.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia helps formulate and implement monetary policy, supervises banks and bank 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 Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank serves eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Delaware.