I thank the organizers for designing such a broad and topical programme. With the increasing digitalization of the economy, data has become central in all the social sciences, and economics is no exception. In fact, some have talked about data being the new oil of today’s world. Econometrics and statistics are therefore becoming increasingly dependent on the availability of huge and heterogeneous datasets.
Only few years ago, the econometric profession was rather cautious about Big Data. Classical econometrics is based on theory and so relies on approaches that differ significantly from those of Big Data analytics. Econometricians have been taught for decades to start with a theory and then use data to prove or disprove it.