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About us
Point of contact:
Kurt Schuler (e-mail: kschuler@the-cfs.org) works for the U.S. Treasury Department. Historical Financial Statistics is a spare-time activity, and his participation in it implies no endorsement by the Treasury. If your question is about the particulars of data that a researcher has supplied rather than about Historical Financial Statistics, please contact the researcher directly rather than contacting us.
Description and mission:
Historical Financial Statistics is a free data set that aims to be a source of comprehensive, authoritative, easy-to-use data for key financial statistics stretching back several centuries. Over the years, researchers have collected reams of historical financial statistics, but even those that are already online are often hard to locate. Historical Financial Statistics makes existing digital data available in a single place, and ultimately, we hope, in a searchable, menu-driven database. By showing what data have been digitized, Historical Financial Statistics also shows where gaps remain.
Basis of operation:
Noncommercial: contributors submit data free of charge, and everyone who works on the data set does so free of charge. We welcome assistance.
Coverage:
See the “Data” and “Documentation” pages for our scope of coverage.
Sources and treatment of data:
We welcome submissions from anyone with high-quality data to share. Historical Financial Statistics credits all contributors of data. Data can come from any appropriate source. See the page on “Submitting data” for details.
Copyright:
This site and its contents are copyrighted 2010 and subsequent years by Historical Financial Statistics.
See the “Submitting data” page about the conditions under which we accept submitted data.
Holders of copyrighted data who think their copyright has been violated should contact us.
Users of data for noncommercial purposes, except databases, may freely reproduce data in Historical Financial Statistics provided they cite us as the source of the data. See the “Data” page for suggested citations. Noncommercial databases may also freely reproduce data in Historical Financial Statistics provided they receive our consent (which we will ordinarily give), cite us as the source of their data, and allow us to freely reproduce their data.
Users of data for commercial purposes should first check if the original copyright holders retain rights. (Start with the documentation file, which has a link on the “Documentation” page.) Where they do not, commercial users except databases may freely reproduce up to 5,000 data points as text (numbers) in a single article or book. They may also use any number of data points as the basis of graphs, provided that they do not show precise text values for more than 5,000 data points. This provision is intended to make it easy to use data in articles, books, and similar fee-paid publications, especially those with a scholarly or educational purpose. To reproduce more than 5,000 data points of text for commercial use in a single article or book, or to include any data from Historical Financial Statistics in a commercial database, contact us for permission.
Legal notice:
Users assume all responsibility for the consequences of using data in Historical Financial Statistics. In particular, be aware that the data come from a variety of original sources, transmitted through many researchers, so data may be less standardized than they appear.
A brief history:
In 2009 Kurt Schuler had the idea of establishing Historical Financial Statistics as a central repository of data. After reading Alan Freeman’s paper on a “Datapedia,” Schuler contacted Freeman, who suggested that Historical Financial Statistics could be much more useful as a menu-driven database rather than as simply a collection of spreadsheets. Freeman and Schuler are working with the Center’s Jeff van den Noort on the design of a database. The underlying data result from the efforts of many researchers. Historical Financial Statistics went online in July 2010. The Center for Financial Stability generously agreed to host the data and to provide technical support.
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