HOW TO FIND IT ON THE INTERNET THERE'S A VAST AND GROWING TROVE OF ONLINE INFORMATION YOU CAN USE TO TRACK THE ECONOMY. IT'S FREE--AND JUST A MOUSE CLICK AWAY.
By JAMES ALEY REPORTER ASSOCIATE LENORE SCHIFF

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Ever get a sneaking suspicion that the only difference between you and an economic pundit is that the pundit has all the facts and figures, and you don't? Like maybe the world economy could be your oyster too, if only you had the right fork?

Well, your fork has arrived, and it's called the Internet. If you have a personal computer and a modem, you can use this potent utensil to devour a stupendous variety of information about the U.S. and world economies. You can divine the big picture like a pro, comparing gross domestic products of G-10 countries, charting the federal funds rate, and looking up whether anyone uttered the words "flat tax" on the floors of Congress over the past week. Or you can narrow your focus to things like the unemployment rate in the Netherlands (7.7%), per capita income in Idaho ($17,540), and the number of households that lack complete plumbing facilities in Munising, Michigan (three).

A lot of information about the economy, especially government statistics, is already free for the asking. But why waste a phone call to the New York Fed in search of last week's commercial paper rate when you can get it off the Net while simultaneously downloading the latest Economic Report of the President? And even if heavy Net traffic means you have to wait a few minutes--and sometimes longer--to get industrial production figures for the past year, it's still easier than hunting them down at the library. To get to the good stuff, you need some gear. Hardware-wise, either a Mac or a DOS-compatible machine will do, but when it comes to modems, the faster the better. Get one that runs at least at 14,400 baud, so you won't have to wait eons as your files download. Unless your office is already hooked up to the Internet, you'll also need an online subscription with a company that provides access to the Net as well as to the World Wide Web.

The Web is a vast, interlinked network of computer files all over the world that you access by clicking your mouse. Think of it as the Internet's multimedia subuniverse--and where you'll find the really fun stuff. (CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online all feature the Web, as do many smaller services.) Finally, get yourself a Web "browser," which is simply the software that gets you from file to file. There are several out there, the most popular being Netscape Navigator, which you can download free of charge.

Now for the fun part. Start off at a Web site called "Resources for Economists on the Internet." (For this Internet address and others mentioned here, see table.) Maintained by Bill Goffe, an economist at the University of Southern Mississippi, this "home page" (Web jargon for a particular site's table of contents) is indispensable for economically minded Web wanderers. The page contains a catalogue of "hypertext" pointers (highlighted words or phrases that you click on with your mouse to connect to interesting places around the Web). Everything is organized by topic, so if you want to find out what a bar chart of New Zealand's per capita GDP might look like, start by clicking on the "World and Non-U.S. Data" label. The server returns another list, this time narrowed down to places that specialize in international economic data. You soon find your way to an item called the "Penn World Tables." From a list of 152 countries, choose "New Zealand," highlight "Real GDP Per Capita," pick the kind of chart you want, click the plot button, and--presto!--the server returns a nice, neat graph showing New Zealand's per capita GDP between 1950 and 1992.

Goffe's list can help you tap a seemingly limitless vein of economic data on the U.S. economy. Inflation, employment, capacity utilization--you name it. One handy site, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, can deliver to your desktop a wide array of macroeconomic data series like the consumer price index, housing starts, GDP, and assorted interest and exchange rates, all in neat tables that you can dump into a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel to make your own charts. All the data are organized into "current," meaning January 1994 on, and "historical"--everything available through December 1993.

For local economic color, check out the Regional Economic Information System (REIS). Run by the University of Virginia, this site offers a huge array of current and historical economic data, which you can parse right down to the metro-area level.

You can mine the mother lode of U.S. demographic information through the Census Bureau's Web site. An elegant series of screens with mouse-driven menus guides you through the data from the 1990 census as you pick a geographical area--from the whole country down to a small town. You then specify what kind of information you want, click submit, and get a snappy report. Since the census did more than just count people, you can also generate breakdowns by criteria like occupation, commuting time, home value, and--yes--the number of households with complete plumbing facilities.

Several other governmental entities boast swell servers. The Library of Congress has a site called Thomas (as in Jefferson, the Library's sponsor). Here you'll find the complete text of the Congressional Record for the past couple of Congresses. With the typical user-friendliness of the Web, Thomas will scan the text of bills and proceedings by words or phrases. You can narrow your search further by date, bill number, person speaking, or whether the words were spoken in the House or Senate. The University of Missouri at St. Louis has online versions of the annual Economic Report of the President for recent years; the White House server has an online copy of its proposed budget for fiscal 1996, plus an archive of daily press releases and policy statements.

Many of the sites on the Net are worth a visit simply because they're interesting. A server out of Vanderbilt University with the dry name "Antitrust Policy," for instance, is a narrowly focused but well-executed Web site covering antitrust news and case studies, as well as economic research on the subject, all linked by hypertext. Anyone interested in economic history ought to check out the Cliometric Society's server: It lists dozens of studies on subjects ranging from child labor at the turn of the century to an analysis of postwar wage performance of blacks and whites. For economic history, ash-heap division, head for the complete works of Marx and Engels, kept at the University of Colorado. And if the dismal science gets you down, you can always visit the "Economist Jokes" page.

Cool.