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January/February 2006, 
Vol. 88, No. 1
Posted 2006-01-01

Replicability, Real-Time Data, and the Science of Economic Research: FRED, ALFRED, and VDC


This article discusses the linkages between two recent themes in economic research: "real time" data and replication. These two themes share many of the same ideas, specifically, that scientific research itself has a time dimension. In research using real-time data, this time dimension is the date on which particular observations, or pieces of data, became available. In work with replication, it is the date on which a study (and its results) became available to other researchers and/or was published. Recognition of both dimensions of scientific research is important. A project at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis to place large amounts of historical data on the Internet holds promise to unify these two themes.