exploring the Web The World Wide Web has become an extremely valuable and convenient resource for financial research. This book emphasizes the importance of this tool in several ways.
First, you can view the most current data for a high percentage of the in-text data figures by using eText to access the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s FRED database. Figures for which you can do this are labeled MyEconLab Real-Time Data. Second, at the end of almost every chapter there are several real-time data analysis problems, which ask you to download the most recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s FRED database and then use these data to answer interesting questions. Third, there are additional Web exercises at the end of many chapters that prompt you to visit sites related to the chapter and use them to learn more about macroeconomic issues. Web references are also supplied at the end of each chapter; these list the URLs of sites related to the material being discussed. You can visit these sites to further explore a topic you find of particular interest. Note: Website URLs are subject to frequent change. We have tried to select stable sites, but we realize that even government URLs change. The publisher’s website (http:// www.myeconlab.com) will maintain an updated list of current URLs for your reference