Resources for Academics
For specific departments and/or libraries of universities or colleges, we offer a subscription to the U.S. Business Cycle Indicators database through IP filtering. This allows researchers, professors, and students of the subscribing academic institution to gain access to over 250 economic time series that we offer in our database.
With a site license, students, faculty and librarians will have 24-hour-a-day access these important economic statistics in spreadsheet form — with no restriction on number of users and no copyright worries for your institution.
The U.S. Business Cycle Indicators database is a comprehensive set of over 250 economic series and includes the official U.S. Leading Economic Indicators and the widely followed Consumer Confidence Index--that have proven to be most useful in determining current conditions and predicting the future direction of the economy.
Andrew Abel, the Robert Morris Professor of Finance at The Wharton School, and Ben Bernanke, Professor of Economics at Princeton, have made the BCI dataset an integral part of their macroeconomics textbook published by Addison-Wesley. Both professors find the BCI database to be particularly helpful in preparing lectures and developing class assignments that bring real-world facts to economic problems and ideas.
As you may know, The Conference Board is a worldwide, not-for-profit and nonpartisan business membership organization that provides timely research on management practices and economic trends. Our twofold purpose is to improve the business enterprise system and to enhance the contribution of business to society.
Our history with economic data and analysis goes back to The Conference Board inception in the early 1900s when we developed the precursor to the Consumer Price Index as a means of providing useful information (as neutral and trusted third party) in labor negotiations.
Since 1999, we introduced business cycle indicators for Australia, China, Euro Area, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Additional countries will be added in the near future. Today, we remain an important source of economic indicators, hold numerous business management and education-oriented conferences, and are proud to be the most frequently quoted private source of business information.
We welcome questions you may have about the BCI database and opportunities to discuss textbook partnerships that will make this information even more valuable to educators. Send an email to indicators@tcb.org.
