King's College London

The conference was co-organised with the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Board. This conference is the outcome of our ongoing collaboration with non-academic research institutions. DAFM aims to bridge the gap between academia and the industry and for this reason we frequently host joint events, seminars and public lectures with external parties.

This two-day event had keynote speeches and sessions of paper presentations. On the first day, we also had a successful panel discussion which brought together people from different industries. Over the two days of the conference there were panel discussions on the trends of big data in the economic literature, where high-profile participants exchanged views.

Dr Fotis Papailias, Lecturer in Banking and Finance discusses “Big data nowadays can be found everywhere in our lives, our location, our internet searches, our social media presence, health records, road traffic, weather measurements, and so forth. These are only some of the many ways Big data can come into our lives, the event saw fascinating discussions around novel modelling approaches and we are grateful for the collaboration with The Bank of England on such a great event.”

The aim of this conference was to discuss ways that various types of big data can fit into economic research and help policy-makers in their decisions.

The workshop consisted of a well-balanced panel of central bankers, academics and industry speakers including, Andy Haldane (Chief economist of BoE), Domenico Giannone (Assistant Vice President of New York Fed), Paul Ormerod (economist, author and entrepreneur), George Kapetanios (Professor of Econometrics, DAFM co-director) Rebecca Riley (Director of Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence) who offered different insights as to how big data can benefit economics and helped pull together a successful conference.