In the early 1990s, I remember Governor Carlo Azeglio Ciampi’s reluctance to accept my proposal to create a Statistical Division within the Research Department on the grounds that the Bank’s economists were those who knew best which statistics were needed, and therefore were also best suited, as potential users, to being involved in their production.
A good example of the need for dialogue between data producers and economic analysts is credit rationing. In order to estimate the extent to which households have no access to credit, we require a complex set of interrelated questions, first asking respondents whether they had thought about applying for a loan, then whether they actually made the application, and finally whether they got it.