In today’s world, the abundance and availability of a wide variety of data is something we take for granted. However, a great deal of historical data is unavailable to us, locked away inside books, maps, images, and other analog data sources. Recently, researchers have developed tools to convert such natively unstructured data into readily accessible digital data, opening up a wealth of research opportunities and insights into current and historical economic questions.
From Rasters to Rows brought together leading researchers developing new methods of automated data extraction and applying them to frontier social-science research. President Patrick Harker opened the conference and introduced the Philadelphia Fed’s Center for the REstoration of Economic Data (CREED), which provides the public with digitized versions of historical, previously inaccessible data and innovative methods to conduct timely economic and policy-relevant research. Read his remarks.
The conference was organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s CREED, the Center for the REstoration of Economic Data. Download the conference booklet.
Watch: Racial Covenants in Philadelphia presented by Robyn Smith
Watch: Automatic Digitization of the Census of Housing Block Statistics presented by Jeffrey Lin and Dan Moulton
View Select Presentations
- Racial Covenants in Philadelphia presented by Robyn Smith, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
- Ghost Neighborhoods: Digitizing the Columbus Sanborn Maps presented by Harvey Miller, The Ohio State University
- The Historical Housing Prices Project presented by Allison Shertzer, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
- A Compound AI System for Cheaper and Efficient Table Digitization at Scale presented by Vitaly Meursault, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
- Decennial Census Digitization and Linkage Project presented by Katie Genadek, University of Colorado and U.S. Census Bureau
- Automatic Digitization of the Censuses of Housing Block Statistics presented by Jeffrey Lin, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and Dan Moulton, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
- The Costs of Housing Regulation: Evidence from Generative Regulatory Measurement presented by Arpit Gupta, New York University