ScrapeFOMC

This repository contains python codes to scrape FOMC meeting dates including selected documents.

Scrape History

With the following code the history (up to 2016 at the moment) can be downloaded:

dirname = "/path/to/repository"

# Which documents to download
documentTypes = ["Record of Policy Actions", "Minutes", "Beige Book", "Tealbook A", "Tealbook B", "Greenbook",
                 "Bluebook", "Redbook", "Longer-Run Goals", "Memoranda", "Statement", "Supplement", "Transcript",
                 "Individual Projections"]

startyear = 1936
endyear = 2016
df1 = get_fomc_archive(dirname, startyear, endyear, documentTypes)

Scrape last 5 years

Some documents are only released after 5 years. With the following code the the last five years of meeting dates and available documents can be downloaded:

# Which documents to download
documentTypes = ["Minutes", "Longer-Run Goals", "Statement", "Projection"]

df2 = get_fomc_current(dirname, documentTypes)

Notes:

• The program uses the selenium package with geckodriver. See here for more information: https://github.com/mozilla/geckodriver
• The full database is quite large (more than 5 GB)