The Korean Economic Forum
Using Big Data as a Source of Economic Statistics
Hyejung Moon (Bank of Korea)Year 2019Vol. 11No. 4
Abstract
As the social interest in big data increases and the statistical environmentchanges, international statistical institutions have actively discussed the use ofbig data as a source of official statistics. The big data collected from scanner,web scraping, and electronic payment, for example, have been partly utilized toestimate price indices and household expenditures in some advanced countries.Social media and Internet search data are also widely used as economic orfinancial indicators. It implies the high potential of the big data for thecompilation and analysis of economic statistics despite their intrinsic limitations.Therefore, the institutions responsible for economic statistics in Korea arerecommended to use the big data where relevant in an attempt to improve thetimeliness, inclusiveness, and accuracy of economic statistics.