« The 12th Day of Christmas: The Incredibles, Christmas List | Main | Classroom Bias at Yale: The Yale Free Press Survey »

December 17, 2004

Economagic Charts: The Inflation Rate

I am browsing through data sites for next semester. Free stock and macro data is well represented on the Web, but business data is a little harder to come by, except in the fee-based services to which my university subscribes.

One good site for macro data is Economagic, which allows easy construction of Gif charts like the inflation one I've put here.

It's interesting how the monthly rate zigs and zags. Is this measurement error-- that when one month is high due to positive measurement error, the next is low due to negative error? Or, perhaps, Fed corrections? This is the sort of things time-series econometricians study, and they no doubt have answers.

Posted by erasmuse at December 17, 2004 10:20 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.rasmusen.org/mt-new/mt-tb.cgi/349

Comments

On inflation zigzags - I'd say sampling variation. It can't be Fed corrections - long and variable lags and all that.
If you do find evidence for negatively autocorrelated measurement error, the CPI would be interested to know that.

Posted by: randy at December 17, 2004 11:37 AM

Post a comment




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)