The Guide to Economic Indicators, 2nd ed.

• Author: Barber, M.E.

The expansive literature on economic indicators is replete with abstruse and often esoteric prose reserved for the academic world or adept economists. Norman Frumkin again departs from this course as he revisits the issues that frame the American economy. Frumkin's 1994 The Guide to Economic Indicators presents an explicit and systematic explanation of the fundamental and emergent indicators that reflect the current U.S. economic conditions. This book is written in clear, concise, everyday language and will provide valuable reference to anyone who endeavors to interpret and understand the dynamics of the consumer, industrial, labor, and financial markets.

Expanding on his first edition, Frumkin's latest effort updates and revises his analysis of macro-level indicators and includes an examination of several novel indicators. To his credit, this author fully conveys how to interpret changes in these indicators and explores various methods of evaluating accuracy and presentation.

Each indicator is appropriately accompanied by a trend analysis and an explanation of the impact each individual factor has on the state of the economy. The fundamental purpose of this guide is to identify the economic indicators that reflect the overall status of the domestic economy in a comprehensive but understandable manner. To this end, the author presents indicators in alphabetical order so as to provide the reader with a quick, ready-reference resource. In addition, cross-referencing is made easy. The reader will find indicators italicized whenever they are covered in chapters other than those in which they are the central focus.

To keep the analysis focused on economic indicators, Frumkin describes more than 60 indicators and groups them in 48 categories. Each indicator comes with a definition and a summary of what that particular factor represents. Primary and secondary publication sources for obtaining the indicator and publication dates for the preliminary and revised information are provided. Also, the analytical techniques used in...