Russia mines big data to monitor its economy

Better data: Morozov says the central bank can rely on big data to pry information even more forward-looking than that contained in purchasing managers’ indexes. — Reuters

 MOSCOW: Raw numbers no longer cut it for Russia’s central bank in its effort to keep up with the economy.

Instead, the man running its research and forecasting wants to know how Russians really feel by mining “big data,” gathered from social media and online stores. The Bank of Russia has already developed a gauge of economic activity by scouring a news site, according to Alexander Morozov, who’s headed the department for almost two years after a decade as HSBC Holdings Plc’s economist in Moscow.