Greenbook Data Sets

Several data sets contain the projections from the Greenbooks of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The Greenbook is produced before each meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. Using an assumption about monetary policy, the Research staff at the Board of Governors prepares projections about how the economy will fare in the future. These projections are made available to the public after a lag of five years.

Philadelphia Fed's Greenbook Data Set

This data set contains Greenbook projections for many of the variables also forecast in the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF). The variables include: real GDP and its components, nominal GDP, five measures of inflation, unemployment, industrial production, and housing starts. All together, the Philadelphia Fed's Greenbook Data Set includes Greenbook projections for 15 variables. We record the projections from the Greenbooks with publication dates that are aligned (as closely as possible) with the quarterly deadline dates of the Survey of Professional Forecasters.

Output Gap and Financial Assumptions from the Board of Governors

This data set contains Greenbook historical values and projections for the real-time output gap and assumptions for financial variables, including the federal funds rate, other interest rates, the exchange rate index (nominal and real), and equity prices. This data set will be updated annually, usually in January.

NAIRU Estimates from the Board of Governors

This data set contains the Federal Reserve staff's real-time estimates of the NAIRU. This data set will be updated annually, usually in January.

PDF Data Set from the Board of Governors

This data set contains Greenbook projections of all variables for all Greenbooks from January 1966 to December 2007. For some variables, the projections are for levels; for other variables, the projections are for growth rates. This data set will be updated annually, usually in January.

ASCII Data Set from the Board of Governors

The PDF files above have been converted into ASCII files from January 1978 to June 1998. Updating these files is under consideration. For more recent forecasts, please see the PDF data set from the Board of Governors.

Last update: March 4, 2013