## Editor’s Letter

## Source details

**Canonical URL:** [Editor’s Letter](https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2025/12/editors-letter.pdf)

## Other formats

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### Context and framing
- Date: 5DECEMBER 2025
- Issue theme: "Data that Delivers"
- Opening premise: "To serve the public good, data needs to help us see our world more clearly, make better decisions, and respond intelligently to complexity."
- Central question set:
  - How can we distinguish meaningful signals of economic activity from noise in the age of AI?
  - How should new data sources inform policy decisions?
  - To what extent can new sources of data complement or even replace official statistics?
  - Are we measuring the metrics that matter in today’s increasingly digital economy, or are we "simply tracking what we looked at in the past?"

### Data abundance and interpretation challenges
- Observation: "we live in a galaxy of data" from satellites, smartwatches, social media, and transaction swipes.
- Risk noted: "More data doesn’t automatically mean better insights or decisions."
- Limitation of alternative data: often a by-product of private business activity and may carry private-sector biases and lack long continuity and robust methods.

### Role and limits of private/alternative data (authors and arguments)
- Kenneth Cukier:
  - Metaphor: economists likened to radiologists who resisted clearer MRI scans because they were trained to read fuzzier ones.
  - Implication: potential clinging to outdated metrics despite faster, granular, and sharper insights that better reflect "ground truth".
- Claudia Sahm:
  - Central banks are tapping new sources to fill gaps, including falling response rates to national surveys.
  - Recommendation: use alternative data "in tandem with trusted official sources."
  - Warning: relying on data sources not available to the public "erodes transparency," which is critical to central bank accountability.
- Bert Kroese (IMF):
  - Caution: reliance on private data must not diminish resources available for official number crunching.
  - Risk: without strong, independent national statistical agencies, the integrity of economic data and the policies built on it could falter.
- Rebecca Riley:
  - Claim: core economic metrics like GDP and productivity are increasingly misaligned with a rewired, data-driven economy.
  - Call: modernization of measurement systems to better reflect the growth of intangible assets such as digital services and the evolving structure of global production.

### Data access, concentration, and value
- Viktor Mayer‑Schönberger:
  - Concern: concentration of data collection among a handful of Big Tech companies threatens competition and innovation.
  - Policy proposition: mandate broader data sharing.
- Laura Veldkamp:
  - Topic: the value of data—how to price, use, and share information.
  - Proposal: novel approaches to turn intangible data into something countable.
- Jeff Kearns:
  - Example: nowcasting as an innovative approach helping developing economies close information gaps.
- Saurabh Garg (head of India’s statistical agency, interview):
  - Focus: tackling challenges of scale as public demand for real-time data grows.

### Policy implications and recommendations
- Maintain and strengthen official statistics and national statistical agencies even as private data sources expand.
- Use alternative and private data to complement, not replace, trusted official sources.
- Build strong ties between statistical agencies, private providers, government officials, and academics to improve data quality.
- Insist on transparency and public availability of data sources used for policy to preserve accountability.
- Consider policies that require broader data sharing to mitigate concentration risks and support competition and innovation.
- Modernize measurement systems to capture intangible assets and digital services more accurately.

### Overarching conclusion
- Core message: Better measurement is not just about more data—it's about using it wisely. "Data, after all, is a means not an end."
- Editor: Gita Bhatt, editor-in-chief

*Source: Editor’s Letter, Finance & Development, 5DECEMBER 2025*

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_Source: https://www.imf.org/-/media/files/publications/fandd/article/2025/12/editors-letter.pdf_