The Beige Book, more formally called the Summary of Commentary on Current Economic Conditions, is a
report
A report is a document that presents information in an organized format for a specific audience and purpose. Although summaries of reports may be delivered orally, complete reports are almost always in the form of written documents. Usage
In ...
published by the United States
Federal Reserve Board
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, commonly known as the Federal Reserve Board, is the main governing body of the Federal Reserve System. It is charged with overseeing the Federal Reserve Banks and with helping implement the m ...
eight times a year. The report is published in advance of meetings of the
Federal Open Market Committee. Each report is a gathering of "
anecdotal
Anecdotal evidence is evidence based only on personal observation, collected in a casual or non-systematic manner. The term is sometimes used in a legal context to describe certain kinds of testimony which are uncorroborated by objective, indepen ...
information on current
economic
An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with th ...
conditions" by each
Federal Reserve Bank
A Federal Reserve Bank is a regional bank of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. There are twelve in total, one for each of the twelve Federal Reserve Districts that were created by the Federal Reserve ...
in its district from "Bank and Branch directors and interviews with key business contacts, economists, market experts, and others."
It is called the ''Beige Book'' because its cover is colored
beige.
History
The ''Beige Book'' (at that time called the ''Red Book'') would first be collected under the direction of
Arthur Burns in 1970, seeking to formalize the process of collecting qualitative understandings of the various districts under the Federal Reserve.
The ''Red Book'' would become public following the request of U.S. House of Representatives delegate
Walter E. Fauntroy in 1983.
This public release would lead to the document being published with a Tan cover - later to be identified as Beige and named as such. Further care was taken to ensure that the document was anonymous with regard to the sources of the qualitative opinions within the text.
While there was initial concern about the book becoming the subject of overinterpretation, the document itself was not much noticed until after the
stock market crash of 1987
Black Monday is the name commonly given to the global, sudden, severe, and largely unexpected stock market crash on Monday, October 19, 1987. In Australia and New Zealand, the day is also referred to as ''Black Tuesday'' because of the time z ...
, where it would become more frequently mentioned within financial and news publications like the
Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
,
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
, and
Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...
.
Consistent mention of the ''Beige Book'' has been made in public financial publications in years since, identifying it as both predictive and market influencing in nature - something which has since been followed up with scholarly consideration of these issues.
Beginning in 2017 the form and structure of the ''Beige Book'' has been changed to encourage more uniformity and comparability between individual districts reports.
Beige Book Scholarship
While it was never the intention with the initial publication of the ''Beige Book'' that it would be predictive, various scholars have looked into its predictive or market influencing forces.
This is further complicated by the fact that the language within individual districts varies in nature with how it identifies the current market, outside of the subjective evaluations identified.
Other topics of research involve evaluating how effectively the ''Beige Book'' mirrors actual shifts in the financial climate of a given district.
Current thoughts are that while the beige book may forecast to a small degree, its forecasts are largely influenced by various other factors like the irregular release schedule of the text and the more widely varying economic nature of each individual district.
References
External links
Federal Reserve Board Beige Book website
{{Federal Reserve System
Federal Reserve System
Economics publications