The RSS Special Interest Group (SIG) on Statistics in Finance and Economics held its first meeting on 13 February at the Royal Statistical Society.
At the event, the SIG were happy to welcome three speakers from the Office for National Statistics to talk about new administrative data sources and the opportunities and challenges they provide.
Jonathan Athow, Director of Economic Statistics at ONS, gave an overview of the issues raised by new data sources and introduced his colleagues, who spoke to the group about the potential uses of VAT data (Richard Heys) and the potential use of scanner data in price measures (Michael Hardie).
All three provided an interesting insight into the potential ways in which new data sources might be used to enhance the speed, accuracy and sample size related to economic statistics, while making it clear that the use of such data sources required careful management of both the statistical and practical issues raised by the adoption of such new sources.
Report by Robert Neill, chair of the RSS Finance and Economic Special Interest Group. Read more about the SIG.