Philadelphia Fed Forecasting Surveys: Their Value for Research

www.philadelphiafed.org economists around the country.1 He continued to publish his survey every six months, gathering and reporting on the forecasts and tracking their evolution over time. His survey, which was the only collection of private-sector forecasts of macroeconomic variables in the country at the time, gained a national following. Economic researchers began using the survey extensively in the early 1970s to test theories about people’s expectations. By 1978, Livingston was having trouble keeping up with all of the requests for the data and turned the data over to the Philadelphia Fed’s Research Department, which organized the data in a computer database and made them available to researchers on request. Livingston still ran the survey, but the Philadelphia Fed compiled the results and maintained the database. Livingston provided the first report of the survey’s results in his column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. When Livingston died in 1989, the Fed took over the administration of the survey and carried on Livingston’s legacy. Since the advent of the Internet, the Fed has made all of the historical Livingston data available on its website.2