Download Real Time Data at the FRB St. Louis

AlFRED Developments
Bob Rasche
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
October 2008
AlFRED Inventory
• Currently 19,747 Series
– Recent Additions
• Greenbook Projections (21) starting
in 01/78
• CPI series (2)
• Real Potential GDP starting 01/91
• Missing Data Policy (incomplete
vintages)
• e.g. All items CPI SA
AlFRED Activity
• Jan-Sept 2008 = 5.44 million
hits
• Jan-Sept 2007 = 1.88 million
hits
AlFRED Initiatives
• H.3 Statistical Release data (will complete
backfilling of FRED categories)
• Annual Data (as in Economic Report of the
President)
• International Data from BLS
– www.bls.gov//fls/#tables
• Stock/Watson Data set
– “Bayesian VARs with Large Panels”,
Marta Banbura, Universite Libre de Bruxelles,
ECARES, Domenico Giannone, European
Central Bank, ECARES and CEPR,Lucrezia
Reichlin, European Central Bank, ECARES and
CEPR
• Regional Data (time series and cross
sections)
AlFRED Enhancements
• Data Transformations
• Verticals vs. Diagonals
AlFRED Enhancements
Coming Soon: Web Services
FRED API
http://api.stlouisfed.org
FRED API
• The St. Louis Fed has created APIs
(application programming interfaces) to
allow developers to write programs and
build applications that interact with content
on its websites.
• FRED® API - Users may query our
Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED®)
and Archival Federal Reserve Economic
Data (ALFRED®) databases to retrieve
the specific data desired (according to
source, release, category and series
among other preferences).
FRED API
• Our API accommodates any
programming language that can
parse XML and communicate
with our servers using HTTP.
• XML was designed for
programs to parse and follows a
strict structure unlike much
HTML.
• XML allows custom tags and
relationships among tags.
Example
• Download last two vintages for
series INDPRO, US Industrial
Production Index.
• Include on a browser:
–
http://api.stlouisfed.org/fred/series/observations?series_id=INDPRO&
realtime_start=2008-08-15&observation_start=2007-01-01
&output_type=2&file_type=xls&
api_key=4642533b82088528c2032d949b51b793
AlFRED Enhancements
• Future Developments (your
priorities please!)
– Sample specific data downloads
(will be available with Web
Services)
– Vintage Specific Excel Tabs
– Cross-Section vintages
– Panel vintages