Introducing Data to Students: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) and Luxembourg Income

Study (LIS)

Frans Albarillo Business, Sociology, and Linguistics LibrarianBrooklyn College, CUNYfalbarillo@brooklyn.cuny.edu

OutlineFederal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) and Luxembourg Income Study (LIS)

my role in providing data services to patrons

functionality and features of web resources

implications of the federal government's Open Data Policy with these resources

Big Data and big data

Data Audience at Brooklyn College

Economics and Sociology (undergraduate and graduate )

Management and Finance (undergraduate)

Note: my formal graduate training is in Linguistics

http://research.stlouisfed.org/

Definition of 'Federal Reserve Bank Of St. Louis'

The Federal Reserve Bank responsible for the eighth district. It is located in St. Louis, MO. Its territory includes parts of the states of Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee, as well as the entire state of Arkansas.

Source: “Federal Reserve Bank Of St. Louis Definition | Investopedia.” 2013. Accessed October 22. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/federal-reserve-bank-of-stlouis.asp.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis maintains a database called Federal Reserve Economic Data http://research.stlouisfed.org/

Data Source Time SeriesOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 61,218U.S. Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics 21,626U.S. Department of Commerce: Bureau of Economic Analysis 14,166World Bank 10,442Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 7,257U.S. Department of Commerce: Census Bureau 7,224Eurostat 6,316University of Pennsylvania 5,890University of Groningen 4,542Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 4,300National Bureau of Economic Research 3,036International Monetary Fund 538Federal Housing Finance Agency 520Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council 372U.S. Department of Energy: Energy Information Administration 284U.S. Department of Labor: Employment and Training Administration 221Bankrate, Inc. 198BofA Merrill Lynch 192S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 184British Bankers' Association 150CredAbility Nonprofit Credit Counseling & Education 134Haver Analytics 120Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia 102Dow Jones & Company 51National Association of Realtors 41

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Sources of Economic Data.” Accessed October 21, 2013. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/sources?pageID=1.

What is time series data?

Notes

The Effects of Open Data Policy on FRED

http://www.lisdatacenter.org/

LIS Highlights What is microdata?

largest available database of income microdata

harmonized microdata that enable high-quality, cross-national, comparative research

data from 40 countries, 220 datasets in 8 cross-sections (waves)

29 years old

poverty measurement and analysis

gender gaps in employment, earnings, occupations, and income

user registration to access microdata, key figures (public)Source: Gornick, Janet, Berglind Ragnarsdóttir, and Sarah Kostecki. “LIS: Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.” In Understanding Research Infrastructures in the Social Sciences. Zurich: Swiss Foundation for Research in Social Sciences, 2013.

LIS Technical Paper Number 5: http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/techwps/5.pdf

Audience

Access to Microdata – LISSY

registered users only

SPSS CPS Wave 6 Data

Access to Microdata – Web Tabulator

registered users only

Restrictions on Income Microdata

Data Journey

This can take 3-6 months of manual coding of the data to the LIS template (disaggregates the data)

Example from harmonization guidelines: Household head can be main income earner, person most knowledgeable about the budgetary situation of the household, eldest person, person responsible for the dwelling contract, or simply self defined by the respondents, etc.

Country X survey

LIS variable template

LIS database

Data

Are these resources big data or Big Data?

“Big Data is a shorthand label that typically means applying the tools of artificial intelligence, like machine learning, to vast new troves of data beyond that captured in standard databases. The new data sources include Web-browsing data trails, social network communications, sensor data and surveillance data.”

Source: Lohr, Steve. 2012. “The Age of Big Data.” The New York Times, February 11, sec. Sunday Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/big-datas-impact-in-the-world.html.

“Link these communicating sensors to computing intelligence and you see the rise of what is called the Internet of Things or the Industrial Internet. Improved access to information is also fueling the Big Data trend. For example, government data—employment figures and other information—has been steadily migrating onto the Web. In 2009, Washington opened the data doors further by starting Data.gov, a Web site that makes all kinds of government data accessible to the public.”

Source: Lohr, Steve. 2012. “The Age of Big Data.” The New York Times, February 11, sec. Sunday Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/big-datas-impact-in-the-world.html.

“Data is not only becoming more available but also more understandable to computers.Most of the Big Data surge is data in the wild—unruly stuff like words, images and video on the Web and those streams of sensor data. It is called unstructured data and is not typically grist for traditional databases.”

Source: Lohr, Steve. 2012. “The Age of Big Data.” The New York Times, February 11, sec. Sunday Review. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/big-datas-impact-in-the-world.html.

Big Data or big data—whatever it is, I think it’s an opportunity for librarians to address issues of authority, source, access, technology, privacy, and ethics.

Thank you for listening

Falbarillo@brooklyn.cuny.edu

My thanks to Keith G. Taylor, II, Data Desk Coordinator at FRED keith.g.taylor@stls.frb.org and Janet Gornick, Director of Luxembourg Income Study and Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center