Big-data driven economic analysis has made remarkable progress over the last 10/12 years

This has huge potential IF policy makers were to harness its power effectively

I was in the middle of trying to understand the economic repercussions of the 2008 recession ...

but stuff you can do today with data is incredibly more powerful, and many young scholars are leading the effort

e.g. we can, in almost real time ...

figure out which groups and areas have been more impacted

track consumer spending at a very detailed and granular level

quickly estimate response to fiscal policies like stimulus payments versus unemployment benefits, credit policies like PPP and mainstream lending

estimate behavioral responses to outbreak of disease etc

There is much to be gained from integrating this horse power into policy infrastructure

For example, real time granular data that currently resides with various private data consolidators, should be integrated into regular policy analysis

There is much work to be done for this. e.g. figuring out data access protocols, guaranteeing anonymity and confidentiality ....

answering the 21st century question of where does the ownership of crowd-sourced big data really reside etc.

And we haven't even scratched the surface of what big data can do for health policy and education policy

I really hope that big data analytics becomes part of our policy DNA. The average citizen can benefit a lot potentially.