FRED^®'s Big Around the World Adventure: Using FRED^® to Understand the Global Economy

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis provides a free web-based tool that students and teachers may use to find, download, and analyze data. Federal Reserve Economic Data, better known as FRED^®, provides easy access to trusted providers of global information such as The World Bank and The International Monetary Fund, and can be a valuable tool for having students apply disciplinary concepts and evaluate sources using evidence. New data sources are continually added and the number of available series now exceeds 400,000. FRED's interface lets users create graphs that provide a clear window on global economic activity. The default graphs are easily created, but sophisticated graphs are also possible. When graphs are created in the FRED interface, they are updated automatically each time the provider updates the underlying series. These automatic updates give FRED a great advantage over printed texts or static web postings that easily go out of date.