science

Philadelphia Fed Report

Philadelphia Fed Report is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Philadelphia Fed Report rather than just read about it. In short: The Philadelphia Fed Report, formally known as the Business Outlook Survey and sometimes abbreviated as BOS, is a monthly survey produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (informally known as the Philadelphia Fed) which questions manufacturers on general business conditions. The index covers the Third Federal Reserve District (the jurisdiction of the Philadelphia Fed), namely covers eastern and central Pe…

Key takeaways

Philadelphia Fed Report belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Philadelphia Fed Report to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Philadelphia Fed Report from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Philadelphia Fed Report, formally known as the Business Outlook Survey and sometimes abbreviated as BOS, is a monthly survey produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia (informally known as the Philadelphia Fed) which questions manufacturers on general business conditions. The index covers the Third Federal Reserve District (the jurisdiction of the Philadelphia Fed), namely covers eastern and central Pennsylvania, the nine southern counties of New Jersey, and Delaware. The report is sometimes also called the Philadelphia Fed Index because it includes reporting of some index values.

History The Philadelphia Fed Report has been published monthly since May 1968, and archives for all historical data (revised to account for seasonal adjustments) are available on the website.

Details and data reported

Release schedule The Philadelphia Index is conducted monthly by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and questions voluntary participants on things such as unemployment, new orders, shipments, inventories, and prices paid. The report is released on the third Thursday of every month, making it the earliest such regional report which is released to investors. For instance, the report for April 2014 was released on Thursday, April 17, 2014.

Survey questions The survey is a one-page survey asking respondents to include their name, title, company name, and mailing address, and then seeking their opinion on how they think various indicators related to business changed over the past month, as well as how they anticipate it changing over the next 6 months. For each question, they may select between the options of decrease, no change, and increase. The questions include:

General Business Conditions: What is your evaluation of the level of general business activity? Company Business Indicators: New orders Shipments Unfilled orders Delivery times Inventories Prices paid Prices received Number of employees Average employee workweek Capital expenditures The percentage of respondents selecting particular responses can be accessed, and charted over time to compare responses in different months. Higher survey figures suggest higher production, which contribute to economic growth. Results are calculated as the difference between percentage scores with zero acting as the centerline point. As such, values greater than zero indicate growth, while values less than zero indicate contraction. Some months have additional special questions included in the survey. For instance, the month of April 2014 asked the following questions:

How important are the following factors in influencing your firm’s decision to remain in the three-state region? Have the same factors become more or less important in recent years? for the following list of factors:

Availability of skilled labor Cost of labor Taxes/subsidies/regulation Cost of energy Proximity of customers Proximity to distribution channels Proximity to suppliers/raw materials

Reception

Academic reception The Philadelphia Fed Report has been the subject of some academic literature on economic indicators as well as the relationship between business uncertainty and economic activity.

Reception in the financial press and blogs The indices reported in the Philadelphia Fed Report are widely cited and used in the financial press. The monthly reports are also the subject of many articles in the financial press and blogs, such as Business Insider, Yahoo! Finance, RTTNews, and Advisor Perspectives.

See also Economic reports Survey of Current Business OECD Main Economic Indicators Federal Reserve Bulletin

References

External links Official website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Philadelphia Fed Report

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Philadelphia Fed Report claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Philadelphia Fed Report before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Philadelphia Fed Report ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Philadelphia Fed Report

In research: Philadelphia Fed Report appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Philadelphia Fed Report in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Philadelphia Fed Report is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Surveys (human research), Works about business, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Philadelphia Fed Report outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Philadelphia Fed Report in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Philadelphia Fed Report means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Philadelphia Fed Report out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Philadelphia Fed Report in simple terms?

Why does Philadelphia Fed Report matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Philadelphia Fed Report?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Philadelphia Fed Report.