Big Data for 21st Century Economic Statistics.

• Position: Conference

An NBER conference on Big Data for 21st Century Economic Statistics met in Washington on March 15-16. Research Associates Katharine G. Abraham of the University of Maryland and Matthew D. Shapiro of the University of Michigan; Ron S. Jarmin of the U.S. Census Bureau; and Brian Moyer of the Bureau of Economic Analysis organized the meeting, which was sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. These researchers' papers were presented and discussed:

* Carol Robbins, National Science Foundation; Jose Bayoan Santiago Calderon, Claremont Graduate University; Gizem Korkmaz, Daniel Chen, Sallie Keller, Aaron Schroeder, and Stephanie S. Shipp, University of Virginia; Claire Kelling, Pennsylvania State University, "The Scope and Impact of Open Source Software as Intangible Capital: A Framework for Measurement with an Application Based on the Use of R and Python Packages"

* Katharine G. Abraham, University of Maryland and NBER; Margaret Levenstein, University of Michigan; and Matthew D. Shapiro, University of Michigan and NBER, "Securing Commercial Data for Economic Statistics"

* W. Erwin Diewert, University of British Columbia and NBER, and Robert C. Feenstra, University of California, Davis and NBER, "Estimating the Benefits of New Products"

* David Copple, Bradley J. Speigner, and Arthur Turrell, Bank of England, "Transforming Naturally Occurring Text Data into Economic Statistics: The Case of Online Job Vacancy Postings"

* Edward L. Glaeser, Harvard University and NBER, and Hyunjin Kim and Michael Luca, Harvard University, "Nowcasting the Local Economy: Using Yelp Data to Measure Economic Activity" (NBER Working Paper No. 24010)

* Rishab Guha, Harvard University, and Serena Ng, Columbia University and NBER, "A Machine-Learning Analysis of Seasonal and Cyclical Sales in Weekly Scanner Data"

* Gabriel Ehrlich and David Johnson, University of Michigan; John C. Haltiwanger, University of Maryland and NBER; Ron S. Jarmin, U.S. Census Bureau; and Matthew D. Shapiro, University of Michigan and NBER, "Re-Engineering Key National Economic Indicators"

* Andrea Batch, Jeffrey C. Chen, Alexander Driessen, Abe Dunn, and Kyle K. Hood, Bureau of Economic Analysis, "Off to the Races: A Comparison of Machine Learning and Alternative Data for Predicting Economic Indicators"

* Tomaz Cajner, Leland D. Crane, Ryan Decker, Adrian Hamins-Puertolas, and Christopher Kurz, Federal Reserve Board, "Improving...