Federal Reserve Economic Data

Previous FRED Blog posts have discussed how to measure economic and financial uncertainty. Some measures are based on news coverage from a large set of U.S. newspapers, and others are calculated using the prices of financial derivatives. Today, we measure interest rate uncertainty based on daily financial data.

Our FRED graph above shows the past five years of daily values of the Kansas City Fed’s measure of policy rate uncertainty (KC PRU). The authors describe the index as “the uncertainty around one-year-ahead interest rates.” Higher index values imply that investors trading financial derivatives hold more disparate expectations about future financial conditions. In other words, when the index rises, the range of possible future financial outcomes is broadening, signaling increased uncertainty.

Data are available since April 1, 1989, and could be used to study how investors react to news about monetary policy: Federal Open Market Committee announcements, changes in Fed communication strategies, and many other financial market events.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Kansas City Fed’s Measure of Policy Rate Uncertainty” and start the sample period on 2020-06-01.

Suggested by Diego Mendez-Carbajo.

Tariffs and trade policy have been in the news for months, so today we’re looking at how tariffs have changed over time and the role they play in generating revenue.

Our FRED graph above displays two series:

• The effective import tariff rate (dark-blue solid line, left axis) is the average tax rate the government imposes on imported goods.
• Tariff revenue as a percentage of GDP (light-blue dotted line, right axis) is how much the government collects in tariffs compared with the size of the overall economy.

The effective tariff rate has generally been falling since 1960, continuing a longer trend that began around the 1930s. The percentage of tariff revenue has been falling since about 1990.

Both rates jumped noticeably in 2018 during the first trade war, more or less doubling by 2022. Despite this increase, tariffs still make up only a small part of federal revenue: about 0.3% of GDP per year, far too small to close the gap in the federal deficit, which has been close to 7% of GDP annually in recent years.

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “Federal government current tax receipts: Taxes on production and imports: Customs duties.” Click “Edit Graph,” use “Customize data” to search for “Current payments to the rest of the world: Imports of goods,” and click “Add.” Input the formula a/b*100 and click “Apply.” Next, click “Add Line,” search for and select “Federal government current tax receipts: Taxes on production and imports: Customs duties,” and click “Add Data Series.” Use “Customize data” to search for “Gross Domestic Product,” and click “Add.” Input the formula a/b*100 and click “Apply.” In the “Format” tab, click “Customize” for Line 2 and change “Y-Axis position” to “Right.”

Suggested by Maximiliano Dvorkin and Melanie LeTourneau.

Each quarter, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System releases the Financial Accounts of the United States (Z.1 tables). They include data on transactions and levels of financial assets and liabilities, by sector and financial instrument; and full balance sheets, including net worth, for households and nonprofit organizations, nonfinancial corporate businesses, and nonfinancial noncorporate businesses.

Recently, the Board partnered up with FRED to simplify and enhance the use of these data in FRED. In the FRED graph above, we provide one way of visualizing these data: ratios of debt securities and loans to total assets for the nonfinancial corporate sector. These two ratios tell us how, and how much, the US nonfinancial corporate sector is financing their operations through leverage.*

The blue line is our debt security leverage ratio and the green line is our loan leverage ratio.

• From 1951 to 1990, both series generally moved together.
• From the 1990 recession to 2003, we see a shift away from loans toward debt securities.
• From 2003 to 2008, the loan leverage ratio was relatively constant while the debt leverage ratio decreased: Early in the 2008-09 recession, loans and debt securities were at similar levels. After that recession, we see another shift away from loans toward debt securities.
• During the pandemic, both series spiked as firms were forced to increase their levels of debt to endure reduced consumption.

*We use data from the “Balance Sheet of Nonfinancial Corporate Business” (B.103) release, which is part of the Board’s larger release, “Financial Accounts of the United States” (Z.1).

How this graph was created: Search FRED for and select “TABSNNCB.” Click “Edit Graph”: Use the “Customize” field to search for and select “NCBDBIQ027S” and add the series. Insert b/(1000*a) in the formula field. Use the “Add Line” tab to search for and select “TABSNNCB.” Then add series “NCBLL” and apply the same formula. Use the “Format” tab to change the line styles.

Suggested by Anna Cole and Julian Kozlowski.