infinite, and you can see why scarcity is a problem.

Introduction to FRED

Data is very important in economics because it describes and measures the issues and problems that

economics seek to understand. A variety of government agencies publish economic and social data. For this
course, we will generally use data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank's FRED database. FRED is very user

friendly. It allows you to display data in tables or charts, and you can easily download it into spreadsheet form

if you want to use the data for other purposes. The FRED website (https://openstax.org/l/FRED/) includes data

on nearly 400,000 domestic and international variables over time, in the following broad categories:

• Money, Banking & Finance

• Population, Employment, & Labor Markets (including Income Distribution)

• National Accounts (Gross Domestic Product & its components), Flow of Funds, and International Accounts

• Production & Business Activity (including Business Cycles)
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