Nber Macrohistory

@pipeworx/nber-macrohistory

NBER Macrohistory Database — the National Bureau of Economic Research's public archive of long-run U.S. (and some international) macroeconomic series, most running from the 1800s through the 1960s, across 16 subject categories (prices, money & banking, production, construction, employment, agriculture, foreign trade, government finance, and more). Look up a specific series by its NBER id (e.g. m13045), or browse the ids in one of the 16 subject folders.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1683+ live data sources.

Tools

• nber_macrohistory_series(series_id) — one series by its NBER id (e.g. "m13045" or "a01006"). Returns the title, area covered, units, coverage dates and source notes (parsed from NBER's own documentation for that series) plus every dated observation. m = monthly, a = annual, q = quarterly. If you only have the bare digits, it tries monthly, then annual, then quarterly, and returns whichever exists.
• nber_macrohistory_list_series(category) — every series id in one of the 16 subject-category folders ("01" through "16"). No titles (the directory listing doesn't carry them) — call nber_macrohistory_series on an id to see what it is.

Auth

Keyless.

Data sources

• https://www.nber.org/research/data/nber-macrohistory-database — the archive's landing page (background only, not fetched by this pack).
• https://data.nber.org/databases/macrohistory/rectdata/{folder}/{id}.dat — the series' raw fixed-width data file.
• https://data.nber.org/databases/macrohistory/rectdata/{folder}/docs/{id}.txt — the series' documentation header (title, area, units, coverage, source, notes).
• https://data.nber.org/databases/macrohistory/rectdata/{folder}/ — a category's directory listing, scraped for nber_macrohistory_list_series.

This is a live per-request proxy: every call fetches directly from data.nber.org, nothing is bulk-downloaded or stored by this pack.

Series id → folder. Strip the leading letter (m/a/q); the folder is the first two digits of what remains — "m13045" → folder "13", "a01005a" → folder "01". Verified across categories 01, 07, 08, 11, 13, 15, 16 (2026-09-23). There is no folder 00 or above 16.

data.nber.org 403s any User-Agent containing the literal substring "http", or the substring "bot". Its block page says "Prevent Bots from data downloads." Measured 2026-09-23: "foo/1.0 (+https://x)" → 403, "somebot/1.0" → 403 (on "bot" alone), "foo/1.0 (pipeworx.io)" → 200. Every other pack in this catalog uses a "(+https://pipeworx.io)" User-Agent convention — this one deliberately does not, and cannot, or every request 403s. If you copy this pack's fetch pattern elsewhere against an nber.org/data.nber.org host, keep that in mind.

The per-series .dat file has no missing-data sentinel constant across series — this pack treats any value with abs(value) < 1e-30 as missing, based on the doc header's stated MD=1E-37 convention seen on the series checked so far. If a series' doc header states a different missing-data code, this pack does not read that field — it's a fixed heuristic, not parsed per series.

The .dat files are NOT one row per line uniformly — annual (a-prefix) rows are YEAR VALUE, monthly/quarterly (m/q-prefix) rows are YEAR PERIOD VALUE. This pack tells them apart by counting whitespace-split tokens per line (2 vs 3+), not by trusting the id's prefix letter, since a few ids in the wild (e.g. m13001a) carry a monthly prefix with an annual-shaped suffix.

The doc .txt header has no field delimiter for its title — the human-readable title sits directly above a "----" dashed underline, above which are terse field codes (VAR/REF/EXP lines) that look like more title text but aren't. This pack anchors on the dashed line and reads backward to the nearest blank line or field-code line, rather than trying to match the title text by shape.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nber-macrohistory": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/nber-macrohistory/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/nber-macrohistory/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1683+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/nber_macrohistory_series \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"series_id":"m13045"}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/nber_macrohistory_series. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "nber-macrohistory": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-nber-macrohistory"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-nber-macrohistory

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Nber Macrohistory data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT