<p>The bottom of these indicator/series pages on FRED always lists the source. In this case, it's the OECD. If you dig around a bit on their site, and find where they host the data, there is always some meta-data attached to these that explains pretty much everything you would be looking for normally. Otherwise, they also list an email and you can ask them directly--which I've done on occasion.  They're slow to respond, but get back.  </p>

<p>For your specific question, for example, if you go to <a href="https://stats.oecd.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://stats.oecd.org/</a>, click on the 'Finance', 'Monthly Financial Statistics', 'Monthly Monetary and Financial Statistics' and the select 'Monetary Aggregates - Broad Money M3', it pulls up all the M3 data. On the right-hand side, there is a window you can expand that has all the metadata that answers your question.</p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/bqUSV.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/bqUSV.png" alt="enter image description here"></a> </p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-02-09T14:09:47.187Z
2020-02-09T14:09:47.187Z
anguyen1210
<p>eg M3?
how can we see precisely how it is defined, measured?</p>

<p><a href="https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MABMM301USM189S?fbclid=IwAR1lwaCbKUX16L1meOk6iZvloYOW0F7pIjmq9I4sb5VfvhhLhj8lsVTlpxg" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MABMM301USM189S?fbclid=IwAR1lwaCbKUX16L1meOk6iZvloYOW0F7pIjmq9I4sb5VfvhhLhj8lsVTlpxg</a></p>

<statistics><government-spending><balance-of-payments>
on the FRED website where do i find definitions of the variables they give charts of?
Randor
# on the FRED website where do i find definitions of the variables they give charts of?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2020-02-09)

eg M3?
how can we see precisely how it is defined, measured?

<https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MABMM301USM189S?fbclid=IwAR1lwaCbKUX16L1meOk6iZvloYOW0F7pIjmq9I4sb5VfvhhLhj8lsVTlpxg>

**Tags:** statistics, government-spending, balance-of-payments

---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2020-02-09. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

The bottom of these indicator/series pages on FRED always lists the source. In this case, it's the OECD. If you dig around a bit on their site, and find where they host the data, there is always some meta-data attached to these that explains pretty much everything you would be looking for normally. Otherwise, they also list an email and you can ask them directly--which I've done on occasion. They're slow to respond, but get back.

For your specific question, for example, if you go to <https://stats.oecd.org/>, click on the 'Finance', 'Monthly Financial Statistics', 'Monthly Monetary and Financial Statistics' and the select 'Monetary Aggregates - Broad Money M3', it pulls up all the M3 data. On the right-hand side, there is a window you can expand that has all the metadata that answers your question.

[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/bqUSV.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/bqUSV.png)


---

