Robins School economics professor Dean Croushore tapped to direct research center at Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

August 15, 2008

Robins School economics professor Dean Croushore has been named the interim director of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s new Real-Time Data Research Center. The center facilitates collaborative research using the bank’s real-time data set and its surveys of forecasters. The Real-Time Data Research Center will be a source of knowledge and expertise about real-time macroeconomic data, surveys of macroeconomic forecasts and macroeconomic modeling. The real-time data set includes macroeconomic data series as they were initially released and the subsequent revisions to these data.

The data set enables researchers, forecasters and monetary policymakers to look back at the data the policymakers were confronted with at the time of their decisions about interest rates. It provides an alternative to using data that have been revised over time. Data revisions can make dramatic differences in the results of empirical research and the development of economic forecasting models.

“The Federal Reserve’s ability to make better monetary policy decisions depends on studying past data and how they have been revised. By studying those revisions, we can help policymakers understand how to incorporate data revisions into their decision making,” said Croushore, who is the Rigsby Fellow at the University of Richmond and former vice president in the Philadelphia Fed’s research department. “But the center goes far beyond the study of data revisions and includes much additional macroeconomic research that is relevant for monetary policy.”

Croushore joined the University in 2003 after 14 years at the Philadelphia Fed, where he rose to vice president and economist. His research focus at the Robins School is on real-time data and its implications for policy.