Bruce Kratofil is President of BJK Research, Cleveland, OH. He also is NABE Webmaster. He can be reached at brucek@bjkresearch.com. I

Windows on the Web

July 1999 

In our previous column, we started our tour of economic sites on the Web by looking at some of the resources available from the Federal Reserve. This time, we take a broader look at some of the economic data sources that can help you in your job.

These data sources have exploded in breadth and depth in the past few years. To let you find these data quickly, one of the newest features of nabe.com is a set of Economic Links pages. While our collection of links is expanding, we are always on the lookout for more. If you know of a good web site that covers one of these areas, you can let us know at our new Link Suggestion Box.

International Links

Our International page holds a mixture of links to U.S. agencies, international organizations, and statistical agencies for some of our major trading partners. The links can help guide your way to both data and analysis of the international economy.

If you are looking for U.S. data at the macroeconomic level, the place to start would be the International page of the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). It contains data on the balance of payments, imports and exports, and U.S. direct investment abroad as well as foreign direct investment in the United States. If you want information on foreign exchange rates, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reports on them daily, while the Federal Reserve Board reports on exchange rates both weekly and monthly. If you need to construct data series over longer historical stretches, you may want to check out FRED, the economic database at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Their exchange rate files go back to the 1970s, and their balance of payment data go back to 1960.

Information about international trade is spread across a number of U.S. agencies. The International Trade Administration is the place to go for industry trade data, as well as trade data arranged by states and metropolitan regions. The Office of the United States Trade Representative has a collection of written reports by industry, such as the “White House Report to the Congress on Steel 1/7/99,” as well as a series of agreements between the United States and other countries on trade issue. The Census Bureau has Country by Commodity Trade data, at the one digit SIC level, online for the years 1996, 1997, and 1998.

If you are interested in data from other countries, we have links to the English language pages of the chief statistical agencies for the other G7 countries and for many of the Latin American countries as well. Often, the material translated into English is just a subset of their information, but it is generally easy to jump to the native language page for a particular country. A number of sites also cover statistics on a transnational basis, including Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Community, and the OECD.

Looking for words as well as numbers? A number of places provide country studies online. The first place to start may be the CIA World Fact Book, which gives a capsule view of almost every country, in HTML. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also has a collection of Country Staff Reports. Most of them are full text reports that can be downloaded in Adobe Acrobat format. The World Bank Digital Library also has many reports available, many of them by region instead of by country. The International Page also has many other links to international agencies, think tanks, and special interest pages. Of special mention is the “Asia Crisis and Global Contagion” page by Nouriel Roubini of New York University, which is probably the single best online bibliography covering the current global financial crisis.

Microeconomic Links

If you want to focus on a specific industry, go to the NABE Micro/Industry Links Page. To organize the links, we are using the new North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), which replaces the SIC codes. To get more information on NAICS, you can follow the link to the NAICS page at the Census Bureau. The Micro/Industry page starts out with some multiindustry sources, including the Advance Report of the 1997 Economic Census (which is available both online, and as a downloadable PDF file), FTC Industry Studies, and excerpts from the U.S. Industry & Trade Outlook. For individual industries, most links come either from industry trade groups or government agencies that track specific industries (like Agriculture, Energy, and Transportation). We are adding new sites all the time, but our coverage is still spotty in areas, especially in wholesale and retail trade, and in some of the manufacturing sectors. If you know of a good web site that we haven’t listed, please let us know through the Suggestion Box.

Macroeconomic Links

The three major agencies involved in economic statistics, the BEA, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the Bureau of the Census, all have an extensive online presence. Because most of you are familiar with the output of the BEA and BLS already, we will look at what is available at some of the other agencies. The breadth of material at the Census Bureau, more than just demographic data, can be seen at their alphabetical index page. They cover everything from “Age” and “Assets of State and Local Governments” to “Women Owned Businesses,” “Year 2000 Compliance” and “Zip Code Statistics,” along with just about everything in between. In addition to the NAICS and Economic Census pages referred to above, you can also access their TIGER database (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing), which allows you to draw maps; read or download as PDF files the Statistical Abstract of the United States and State and Metropolitan Area Data Book; and of course browse through the demographic material available from the census.

If you are interested in fiscal policy, two major sources of budget data are available. The Administration viewpoint is available from the Office of Management and Budget site, and the Congressional side of things can be found at the Congressional Budget Office. To see more explanations of the Administration’s economic viewpoint, you can get the Economic Report of the President online. Many of the statistical tables in the appendix are also downloadable. What is especially attractive about this site is that the tables have already been translated into both Lotus 123 WK4 or Microsoft Excel XLS files, which may save you some time in converting data.

If you want to see the Leading Economic Indicators, they are now at The Conference Board’s web site. Many of their features are for subscribers only, but the current release of the LEI, and the numbers going back to 1995, are available in a public section. The press release for their monthly Consumer Confidence Survey can also be viewed online, although the details and numbers are for subscribers only.

In the previous issue of “Windows on the Web,” we looked at the financial data that are available from the web sites of the Federal Reserve. One other place to go, if you want indepth numbers about the banking industry, is the FDIC web site. At the aggregate level, they have quarterly reports for “Statistics in Banking.” If you want to go to the individual level, you can access individual bank call reports via a searchable form. If you want to see how your bank is doing, you can look it up either by name, location, or FDIC certificate number. Then you have access to twentythree different reports, including income statements, balance sheets, offbalance sheet items, chargeoffs and more.

You can use the Links pages to surf the individual sites. Upcoming pages will focus on regional data and on tools for economic analysis. If you want to keep up to date on current releases for many of the economic statistics, you can use the NABE Economic Release Calendar, which gives a schedule of the week’s upcoming releases, and links to take you right to the data.

New at nabe.com

In addition to the Links Pages, a number of other new features have been added to nabe.com. The graphic makeover of the site, undertaken in the spring, includes a number of new navigation controls that should make it easier to find pages. The new site map gives a comprehensive listing of the pages on nabe.com, to help you find your way. If you’ve been checking out the “What’s New” page, you will see that a new Career Center has arrived on the site. This is a comprehensive listing of all the career information available online from NABE. We have combined the series of “Business Economist at Work” columns from past issues of Business Economics into a series that supplements the Careers in Business Economics booklet that is also available online. From here you can also see the “Positions Wanted” listings that members can use in their job search, and NABE members can also see “Employment Opportunities” and the biennial NABE Salary Survey. The “Contacts” page has also been enhanced with feedback forms that will let you inform NABE of job changes, address changes, and the like. You will also see an email directory for important NABE contacts. And if you are looking for a phone number or email address of a NABE member, you can use the “Member Search” page. Upcoming articles in “Windows on the Web” will focus on financial markets and on career information. If you have ideas for what you would like to see covered here, or if you would like to write a guest column, send your idea to wow@bjkresearch.com.