[2] Livingston administered the survey semiannually until his death in 1989, making it the longest continuous record of economists' expectations.
[2] In 1978, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia digitized Livingston's historical data and made it available to researchers.
[1][3] A 1997 paper by Dean Croushure of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia described the history of the survey, argued for its usefulness in testing rational expectations hypotheses through the comparison of forecasts with reality, and explained how the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia was taking over the survey.
[6][7] For instance, a 1983 paper by Dietrich and Joines began with the observation: "For more than a decade, researchers have been using the Livingston survey data on inflationary expectations in empirical work.
[citation needed] Livingston Survey forecasts have been cited by the financial press and blogs many times.