Chapter 1
1. A transcript of the Ford–Carter debate can be found online at the Commission on Presidential Debates (1976).
2. The definition of information as a difference appears in Bateson (1972).
3. Formalizations of the notion that public awareness of the use of economic and social indicators by policy-makers will result in actions by outside parties that reduce the effectiveness of these indicators for the purposes of making policy include Goodhart’s law, Campbell’s law, and the Lucas critique. See Goodhart (1975), Campbell (1976), and Lucas (1976).
Chapter 2
1. Basic techniques for analyzing time series data are presented in Stengel & Chaffe-Stengel (forthcoming).
2. Estimation of seasonal factors and their use in deseasonalizing data and forecasting are covered in Stengel & Chaffe-Stengel (forthcoming).
3. One example of a chained index is the Fisher index, which is the geometric mean of a Laspeyres index and Paasche index. The value is calculated by taking the square root of the product of the Laspeyres index and Paasche index values for each time period.
Chapter 3
1. The recent news release for the GDP and links to the full report and tables appear online at Bureau of Economic Analysis (2011a).
2. Answers to frequently asked questions about the definition of recessions by the NBER appear at National Bureau of Economic Research (2011).
3. The recent press release of the U.S. Leading Economic Index is available at The Conference Board (2011a).
4. The advance, preliminary, and revised retail sales reports are available at U.S. Census Bureau (2011a).
5. The retail sectors included in the GAFO sales are listed at U.S. Census Bureau (2011b).
6. The e-commerce report is available at U.S. Census Bureau (2011c).
7. A report on light vehicle sales can be found online at Autodata Corporation (2011).
8. See the latest Industrial Production Index announcement provided by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2011a).
9. The latest reports for Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories, and Orders are available at U.S. Census Bureau (2011d).
10. Access the latest ISM reports at Institute for Supply Management (2011).
11. Recent releases of the Business Outlook Survey can be found at Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (2011).
12. The latest report on the Consumer Confidence Index is available at The Conference Board (2011b).
13. Recent Consumer Sentiment Index reports appear at Thomson Reuters (2011).
14. See U.S. Census Bureau (2011e) for reports and data on housing starts.
15. Recent reports on construction spending are available at U.S. Census Bureau (2011f).
Chapter 4
1. Reports on Gross Domestic Income and its components are part of the report on U.S. Gross Domestic Product at Bureau of Economic Analysis (2011a).
2. The recent release and associated tables for personal income are available at Bureau of Economic Analysis (2011b).
3. See Surowiecki (2005).
4. Recent Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States reports can be accessed from a list of links at U.S. Census Bureau (2001g).
5. For a description of the Gini index, see The World Bank (2011a).
6. The report on distribution of net worth in the U.S. for 2007 and earlier years appears in Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2009).
7. For the current table showing the net worth of households and nonprofit organizations, see Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2011b).
Chapter 5
1. The gateway to CPI reports and data on the Internet is at Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011a).
2. For a discussion about the Chained CPI-U, see Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011b).
3. For an overview of the hedonic quality adjustment, see Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011c).
4. The gateway to PPI reports and data on the Internet is at Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011d).
5. The recent Employment Situation report is available at Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011e).
6. The recent Employment Cost Index report appears at Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011f).
7. For the recent report on the S&P/Case-Shiller index, see Standard & Poors (2011).
8. For an explanation of the methodology of the S&P/Case-Shiller index, see the link to “Methodology” at Standard & Poors (2011).
9. See National Association of Realtors (2011) for links to the latest reports on existing home sales and pending home sales.
10. For reports and other links related to new residential sales, see U.S. Census Bureau (2011h).
11. Links to price data for crude oil, gasoline, and other petroleum products are at Energy Information Administration (2011a).
12. Agriculture price data are available at National Agriculture Statistics Service (2011).
Chapter 6
1. See Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2011c) for more detail about reserve requirements.
2. A description of the operation of auctions for treasury securities is at TreasuryDirect (2011a).
3. A table of municipal bond yields for different maturities appears in Bloomberg (2011a).
4. For more details about the COFI, see Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco (2011).
5. The recent report on consumer credit interest rates is available at Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2011d).
6. See Bankrate (2011) for typical current home equity loan rates.
Chapter 7
1. The employment summary report is accessible from Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011e).
2. The recent report on unemployment insurance claims and links to data are available at U.S. Department of Labor (2011).
3. Monster Worldwide (2011) provides a description of the index and links to recent monthly reports.
4. See Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011e) for access to the recent average workweek report.
5. Links to releases of productivity reports and data appear at Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011g).
6. Access to news releases and data for multifactor productivity is available at Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011h).
7. This news release can be found at Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011i).
8. The recent report on capacity utilization is at Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2011a).
9. See U.S. Census Bureau (2011i) for access to the latest reports on business inventories.
10. The latest petroleum status report is available at Energy Information Administration (2011b).
11. The latest natural gas storage report is available at Energy Information Administration (2011c).
Chapter 8
1. Bureau of Economic Analysis (2011c) provides the latest news release for imports and exports, with links to tables and data files.
2. See Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011j) for access to releases and data pertaining to the import and export price indexes.
3. Trade weighted foreign exchange index releases and data are available at Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2011e).
4. Bureau of Economic Analysis (2011d) provides the latest news release for international transactions, with links to tables and data files.
5. For a detailed explanation about U.S. international transaction accounts, see Bach (2010).
6. Press releases and data from the Treasury international capital system are available from U.S. Department of the Treasury (2011a).
7. See Bureau of Economic Analysis (2011e) for the recent press release and links to tables.
8. Information about the LIBOR and access to current daily rates is at British Bankers’ Association (2011).
Chapter 9
1. A full statement of the mission of the Federal Reserve is at Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve (2011f).
2. This classic text is Keynes (1936).
3. For the recent report, see Council of Economic Advisors (2011a).
4. The current statement is available at Financial Management Service (2011).
5. See Congressional Budget Office (2011) for the report with this discussion.
6. The current level of U.S. public debt is posted at TreasuryDirect (2011b).
7. Access to the current issue and past issues of the Treasury Bulletin is available at U.S. Department of the Treasury (2011b).
8. FOMC statements and meeting minutes are provided at Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2011g).
9. For data on money supply measures, see Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2011h).
10. A short description and history of the quantity theory of money appears at Investopedia (2011).
11. See Friedman and Schwartz (1963).
12. Past issues of the Beige Book are available at Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2011i).
13. Results of past surveys are available at Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2011j).
Chapter 10
1. The Bloomberg online economic calendar is available from Bloomberg (2011b).
2. The Wall Street Journal online calendar is available from The Wall Street Journal (2011a).
3. See The Wall Street Journal (2011b) for the economic indicators archive.
4. See Yahoo! (2011) for the Yahoo! Finance economic calendar page.
5. The MSN Money economic data calendar is available at Microsoft (2011).
6. The FRED database can be accessed at Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (2011).
7. See Bureau of Economic Analysis (2011f) for guidance on the use of its Interactive Data capability.
8. Issues of Economic Indicators can be accessed at Council of Economic Advisors (2011b).
9. The recent issue of the Survey of Current Business and links to tables are available at Bureau of Economic Analysis (2011g).
10. See Bureau of Labor Statistics (2011k) for the recent issue of Monthly Labor Review and access to the archive of past issues.
11. The latest annual economic report of the President is available at Council of Economic Advisors (2011a).
12. Recent semiannual reports on monetary policy can be found at Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2011k).
13. See The World Bank (2011b) for access to its Open D ta.
14. Global economic indicators can be accessed at International Monetary Fund (2011).
15. The Principal Global Indicators are available at Inter-Agency Group on Economic & Financial Statistics (2011).
16. Methods of analyzing relationships between time series are addressed in most texts on time series analysis, including Stengel & Chaffe-Stengel (forthcoming).