Journal Article
Introducing the Philadelphia Fed nonmanufacturing survey
Sen, Elif (2014-07)
To assess the health of the economy, it sometimes helps to look beyond the numbers and listen directly to business managers. That is why the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and a handful of other regional Reserve Banks and private firms such as the Institute for Supply Management conduct a variety of monthly surveys of business activity. Such qualitative surveys offer the advantage of providing timelier insight into economic activity prior to the official monthly employment and quarterly gross domestic product data releases as well as insight into regional and local trends. And now ...
Business Review , Issue Q3 , Pages 15-22

Journal Article
An experimental index for the Business Outlook Survey: some preliminary findings
Trebing, Michael E. (2011-09)
The Philadelphia Fed?s Business Outlook Survey (BOS) receives considerable attention because it is viewed as both a regional and a national indicator of the anufacturing sector. The value of the survey as an important indicators is due, no doubt, to its unusual longevity (conducted monthly since 1968) and to the fact that manufacturing remains quite sensitive to shifts in overall economic activity. Several studies have shown that the survey?s indexes are useful in quantitatively estimating how the manufacturing sector is doing along a variety of dimension
Research Rap Special Report , Issue Sep