Visualizing Data and the Online FRED Database

Abstract

The author discusses a pedagogical strategy based on data visualization and analysis in the teaching of intermediate macroeconomics and financial economics. In these short projects, students collect and manipulate economic data from the online Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED) in order to illustrate theoretical relationships discussed in class. All the data collection and manipulation tasks are conducted through the FRED Web site. The author argues that as students locate and effectively use the quantitative information that they need to evaluate abstract concepts, they are in effect developing the connection between theories and empirical evidence that underpins the discipline of economics.

Keywords:

• data analysis
• data manipulation
• financial economics
• intermediate macroeconomics

JEL codes:

• A22
• C82
• G12
• G14
• G15

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author acknowledges the feedback received on earlier versions of this manuscript from the participants in Session D4, “Using FRED Economic Data in the Classroom and Examples of FRED-Related Teaching Activities,” at the 2014 National Conference on Teaching and Research in Economic Education (CTREE) hosted by the American Economic Association (AEA) Committee on Economic Education in cooperation with the Journal of Economic Education, as well as from the participants in the workshop, “Data in the Undergraduate Economics Curriculum: Old and New Practices,” part of the 2014 Beyond the Numbers: Economics and Data for Information Professionals Conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Notes

¹For an in-depth discussion of the expected proficiencies of the economics academic major, I direct the reader to the seminal work of Hansen (1986). His influence in shaping the contemporary effort to “educate economists” is explicitly stated in the collected works edited by Colander and McGoldrick (2009, Part 3: Changing the Way We Teach Economics).

²The work of Goffe (2013) offers quantitative evidence of student factual misconceptions related to principles of macroeconomics.

³See Fuhrer et al. (2009).

⁴For a discussion of the Data Tool “Create Your Own Maps,” I direct the reader to the work of Suiter and Stierholz (2009).

⁵A free-access collection of peer-edited classroom teaching activities using FRED is available at Starting Point: Teaching and Learning Economics portal (http://serc.carleton.edu/econ/fred) (last accessed January 18, 2015).

⁶For more information on FRED features, please see http://fredqa.stlouisfed.org/ (last accessed January 19, 2015).

⁷For more information on this particular feature, please see http://fredqa.stlouisfed.org/2014/03/17/new-on-fred-user-dashboards/ (last accessed January 19, 2015).

⁸See Méndez-Carbajo (Forthcoming).

⁹For a history of FRED, please see http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/ar/2013/pages/fred_history.cfm (last accessed January 19, 2015).