The oldest US data series in FRED

The Federal Reserve's FRED database holds some surprisingly old economic data, as the FRED Blog notes. The oldest series overall traces back to U.K. population figures from ten eighty-six, but the oldest U.S. series is nearly as ancient: federal public works expenditure records from seventeen ninety-one. The records show a dramatic spike in military spending during World War One, though with a caveat: these figures aren't inflation-adjusted and were compiled retrospectively in nineteen twenty, so definitions and methods fell short of modern standards. An intriguing detail: a nineteen oh-four bump corresponds to the Panama Canal purchase, which cost forty million dollars to France and ten million dollars to Panama.

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