Chapter 4 — Further Reading

On reading economic data critically

Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics, Riverhead Books, 2021 A practical guide to evaluating quantitative claims in news and policy. Harford writes the Financial Times "Undercover Economist" column and hosts the BBC's More or Less podcast (the gold standard for data fact-checking). The book is built around ten rules that map almost perfectly onto the kind of careful reading this chapter is trying to teach. Highly recommended.

Charles Wheelan, Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data, W. W. Norton, 2013 Wheelan also wrote Naked Economics, cited in earlier chapters. This companion volume is a friendly introduction to the statistical concepts that underlie most economic data. Especially good on what averages and medians actually measure, on regression as a tool, and on the difference between correlation and causation. About 250 pages and easy to read in a week.

Darrell Huff, How to Lie with Statistics, W. W. Norton, 1954 A classic. Written in 1954 and never out of print. The examples are dated (the prices and policies are from the 1950s) but the techniques of misleading-with-statistics are timeless. Worth reading in 2026 because almost every trick the book describes is still being used. About 140 pages.

Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, Penguin, 2014 A mathematician's tour of the kinds of reasoning errors that show up in public arguments — many of which are about economic claims. Funny, accessible, and useful. The chapter on "linearity and its discontents" is especially good for understanding why simple-looking economic claims can mislead.

On the federal statistical system

Andreas Georgiou et al., "Independent Statistical Agencies: Lessons from the Greek Statistical Crisis," Statistical Journal of the IAOS, 2018 A sobering case study of what happens when a national statistical agency is politicized. Georgiou is the former head of Hellenic Statistical Authority, who was prosecuted for accurately reporting Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio. Worth reading as a reminder that institutional independence of statistical agencies is not free or automatic.

Hal Varian, "Big Data: New Tricks for Econometrics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2014 Varian, then chief economist at Google, on how new sources of data (search queries, transactions, online marketplaces) are changing what economists can measure. A good overview of where economic measurement is going.

Diane Coyle, GDP: A Brief but Affectionate History, Princeton University Press, 2014 Coyle, an economist and former U.K. statistical official, traces the history of GDP — how it was invented, what it captures, what it misses, and why it remains the most important number in macroeconomic measurement despite its known limitations. Short, well-written, and the best single book on what GDP is. We'll come back to it in Chapter 22.

On FRED specifically

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, FRED Help and Tutorials, fred.stlouisfed.org/help-faq The official FRED documentation, including video tutorials. If you're going to spend time in FRED (and you should), spend 30 minutes with the tutorials. Free, well-made, and surprisingly engaging.

Alfred (Archival FRED) — fred.stlouisfed.org/tools/alfred The Archival FRED interface lets you see what economic data looked like at the time it was first reported, before subsequent revisions. This is more useful than it sounds: when researchers want to know what policymakers actually knew at the time of a decision, ALFRED is the tool they use.

On the BLS and the jobs report

Steven E. Haugen, "Measures of Labor Underutilization from the Current Population Survey," Monthly Labor Review, March 2009 A short BLS technical paper explaining the difference between U-1 through U-6 unemployment measures. If you found §4.2's discussion of U-6 confusing, this is the cleaner technical explanation.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Handbook of Methods, ongoing The BLS's official methodology documentation, available free online at bls.gov. Long and detailed but the introductory chapters are accessible. If you ever want to know exactly how a BLS series is constructed, this is where you go.

Gretchen Donehower and George Tolley, "Why the U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate Has Been Falling," Brookings Institution, 2016 A careful empirical paper on why the labor force participation rate has been declining for two decades. Splits the decline into demographic factors (aging) and structural factors. Useful background for understanding U.S. labor market data.

On the CPI

The Boskin Commission Report, Toward a More Accurate Measure of the Cost of Living, 1996 The original report that documented the three biases in the CPI. The full report is technical but the executive summary is accessible. Available free from the Senate Finance Committee archives.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI and Its Limitations, various publications The BLS publishes its own honest discussions of the CPI's limitations. Worth reading because it shows how the agency thinks about the trade-offs in measurement.

Brent Moulton, "The Measurement of Output, Prices, and Productivity," NBER Working Paper, 2018 A comprehensive review of how government statistical agencies measure prices and productivity, written by a former BLS official. Technical but illuminating.

Erica L. Groshen et al., "How Government Statistics Adjust for Potential Biases in the Consumer Price Index," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2017 A more accessible academic paper on the CPI biases and how the BLS has addressed them over time. Good for understanding what's been done and what hasn't.

On reading charts critically

Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Graphics Press, 2001 (2nd edition) The classic on how to design (and read) charts honestly. Tufte's "data-ink ratio" and "lie factor" concepts are widely cited and useful. The book is also beautiful as an object — the kind of book that justifies its own price as a piece of design.

Nathan Yau, Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics, Wiley, 2011 A more practical guide to making charts that don't deceive (or, equivalently, recognizing when charts deceive). Yau runs the FlowingData blog and his examples are drawn from real news visualizations.

Alberto Cairo, How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information, W. W. Norton, 2019 A book-length treatment of the topic of this chapter's §4.5. Cairo is a journalism professor who specializes in data visualization, and his examples are drawn from contemporary news. About 250 pages.

Podcasts and ongoing literacy

Tim Harford, More or Less, BBC Radio 4 / BBC World Service A weekly half-hour podcast on the use and misuse of statistics in public life. Harford is honest, funny, and unsparing about bad statistics regardless of which side they support. The single best ongoing resource for staying sharp on quantitative claims.

Planet Money, NPR A more entertainment-style podcast about economics in the news. Often built around a particular story or character; less rigorous than More or Less but covers a wider range of topics.

The Indicator from Planet Money, NPR A daily 10-minute version of Planet Money. Frequently covers a single economic data release in a single episode — a great companion to FRED.

A reading order recommendation

If you have time for one of the books above before continuing to Chapter 5, read Tim Harford's The Data Detective. It is the most directly useful follow-up to this chapter.

If you want to go deeper on chart design, read Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. It is one of the most beautiful books about a technical subject ever published, and it will change how you look at every chart you see for the rest of your life.

If you want to develop the habit of fact-checking economic claims, subscribe to Tim Harford's More or Less podcast. It is free, the episodes are short, and the discipline of listening regularly will keep you sharp.

Chapter 5 — Supply and Demand — is next. It is the most consequential chapter in this entire book. Don't skip it. Take your time with it.