SNS/SIFR Finance panel: Google Chief Economist

Hal Varian visited Stockholm School of Economics to talk about how data from private companies can be used to improve forecasting

Hal Varian is emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley specializing in microeconomics and information economics. He spoke about big data and how it can be used to find information on trends in consumption, housing markets and unemployment for example. With search data from Google, trends can be discovered earlier than before which is something that should be of interest for government agencies, argued Hal Varian.