Mary Suiter

GeoFRED™: A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

Most economists are comfortable with tables of data and graphs, but often students are not. Frequently, students are more comfortable viewing data in another format. The GeoFRED Web page provides an application that allows users to create choropleth maps—thematic maps based on a particular set of data. In this case, maps are created using U.S. economic data for geographies including states, counties, metropolitan statistical areas, basic trading areas, census areas, and Bureau of Economic Analysis economic areas. Maps can be created from more than 214 regional data series available in the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) database. Regional data series include civilian labor force, residential population, and unemployment rate. Various tools allow users to customize and print these maps. In addition to using the map, users can view and print the data charts and easily link to graphs of the data through FRED. The “Help” section provides concise information on how to use the editing tools and provides a glossary of terms related to the mapping tool (e.g., fractile and equal interval, which refer to different methods of categorizing data). There is also a link to “Lessons for Educators,” which offers active lessons for integrating economics and geography using GeoFRED. Comparing and contrasting these data maps for various years or regions can provide opportunity for student discussion, analysis, and writing.

FREDcast: Economic forecasting game

Instructors ofmacroeconomics seeking the kind of experiential and experimental learning opportunities endorsed by Erekson, Raynold, and Salemi (1996) can enroll their students in a free online economic forecasting game. FREDcast is managed by the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and it is the latest addition to the family of teaching and learning online resources described by Suiter and Taylor (2016). To play the game, users sign in to their free FRED account and create a username. By the 20th of each month, each player enters her/his one-month-ahead forecast for the following macroeconomic magnitudes: The monthly, seasonally adjusted, civilian unemployment rate; The monthly change, seasonally adjusted, in payroll employment; The quarterly, seasonally adjusted, annualized, growth rate in real GDP; The monthly, seasonally adjusted, percent change from a year ago, in the consumer price index. As the latest value of each variable is made public, the Web site scores the forecasts, deducting points in direct proportion to the forecasting error. Player scores are ranked both monthly and over time. Individual forecasting errors are compared to average player errors. Instructors can set up private leagues and compare the scores of studentswithin a course. This particular feature adds an engaging social dimension to the study of macroeconomics. The use of FREDcast as an experiential learning resource allows instructors to contribute to the development of data-related expected proficiencies in the economics major. Offering a truly realistic and contemporary background to the study of macroeconomic topics, instructors can design in-class active learning activities around data search and analysis tasks. Also, instructor-led discussions of forecasting strategies—as well as forecasting errors—can reinforce the understanding of the structural theoretical relationships among unemployment, employment, economic activity, and price inflation at the core of the economics curriculum.