The big data revolution and central banking

“We are in the early throes of what is genuinely a revolution: a revolution in information and in data.” So spoke Andrew Haldane, the Bank of England’s (BoE) chief economist, at the launch of the central bank’s ‘One Bank’ research agenda in February. He delivered the keynote at the start of the showiest panel of the day. It felt more like Silicon Valley than Threadneedle Street.

The private sector has been aware of the value of big data for some years now, with Google a prominent leader in the