Federal Reserve Economic Data

Nitrogen-based agricultural fertilizers are key for high crop yields. Between 2021 and 2024, a broad range of global supply shocks resulted in large swings in their price. Today, we go farther back in time to discuss how geopolitical conflict and technological innovation completely reshaped this industry during the first decades of the 20th century.

Our FRED graph above shows the wholesale dollar price of 100 pounds of sodium nitrate traded in New York between 1913 and 1939. This chemical compound is a key input in the industrial production of agricultural fertilizer and also munitions.

Sodium nitrate is also known as “Chilean saltpeter” because it’s present in mineral form in high-desert deposits in Chile and Peru. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, those mines were the largest sources of sodium nitrate.

High demand for munitions during World War I helps explain why the price of sodium nitrate more than doubled between 1914 and 1918. But, because the international trade in Chilean saltpeter was interrupted during the war, industrial alternatives were developed and widely adopted. This alternative supply of nitrates (synthesized from ammonia) quickly lowered the price. By 1933, this commodity traded at half its pre-WWI price, making the Chilean mines unprofitable.

For even more history…

Our FRASER economic archive includes a Fed bulletin from 1922 that describes conditions in Chile:

“The decreased production of nitrate has resulted in serious unemployment in Chile… At the request of some of the more important nitrate producing companies, a law designed to meet the recent difficulties of the nitrate situation was passed in September 1921. Under this law, companies engaging to keep open their plants may receive Government credits secured by nitrate stocks…”

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Wholesale Price of Soda, Nitrate for New York.”

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

Data in FRED can help us understand the scope and specifics of international economic relationships. There’s the flow of goods, of course. But there are also flows of services, primary income (mostly investments and transfers), capital, and other financial transactions.

Collectively, these components make up the balance of payments. Our FRED graph above shows three positive components and their negative counterparts.

• exports and imports of goods, services, and primary income
• capital transfer receipts and payments
• net acquisition of financial assets and liabilities

First, the positive components and their negative counterparts move in a strikingly symmetric fashion.

Second, major movements in the overall US balance of payments seem to be caused by changes in financial assets and liabilities. Although these components aren’t typically as large as exports and imports, they’re the most variable. The other components are fairly stable.

Third, in our graph below, we break down the export and import components into their three subcomponents: goods, services, and primary income. We’ve removed the series titles for readability, but you can hover over the bars to see the specific values. The goods only subcomponents of exports and imports, the top and bottom bars, are much less prominent than total exports and imports.

How these graphs were created: Search FRED for the current account and click on the BEA series. Below the graph and the notes, click on the release table. Check the series you want graphed and click “Add to Graph.” From the “Edit Graph” panel, change the formula on the even-numbered lines to -a. Open the “Format” tab and change the graph to a normally stacked bar graph. Proceed similarly for the second graph, where you can remove the titles in the “Format” tab.

Suggested by Christian Zimmermann.

FRED has data from multiple sources that can help reveal correlations between macroeconomic indicators and policy variables across major economies. For example, the FRED Blog has discussed international comovements in monetary policy before. Today, we dig deeper into economic comovement by looking at recent research from the Richmond Fed.

Researchers Katherine Anderson, Paul Ho, and Nathan Robino used GDP and inflation data from 27 countries between 1981 and 2023 to study how much the U.S. economy moves in parallel with other countries. They found substantial correlations among all countries: “While the comovement is most striking during the Great Recession and COVID-19 periods, it is also visible during the rest of the sample period.”

FRED graphs can fit up to 12 data series at once, but best practice is to use fewer. Our FRED graph above shows the comovement of U.S. GDP annual growth rates (solid dark blue line) and those of the United Kingdom, Japan, and the 19 countries of the Euro Area (various dashed lines) between 1996 and 2024. Simultaneous severe cross-border economic contractions are noticeable during U.S. recessions (shaded areas in the graph), particularly since 2001.

What could help explain these international economic linkages? The Richmond Fed researchers consider two possible channels of economic communication: international trade linkages and global financial networks.

• International trade could transmit demand shocks in one country to all its trading partners.
• Risky asset prices and the risk aversion of investors could also change direction in multiple countries at once, thus creating a global financial cycle.
• Both commercial trade and financial markets may simultaneously combine to influence economic conditions across the world.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Real Gross Domestic Product for United States.” Click on the “Edit Graph” button and select the “Add Line” tab. Search for and add “Real Gross Domestic Product for United Kingdom (DISCONTINUED).” Repeat the last step to add “Real Gross Domestic Product for Japan” and “Real Gross Domestic Product for Euro Area (19 Countries)” to the graph. Next, use the “Edit Lines” tab to select each of the four graph lines from the dropdown menu and change the units to “Percent Change from Year Ago” and modify the frequency to “Annual.” Lastly, use the “Format” tab to customize each line style.

Suggested by Ethan Hunt and Diego Mendez-Carbajo.