Central banks should be in the forefront of developing best practices and adequate safeguards that allow the use of such data without impinging on individuals’ privacy. BIS central bankers’ speeches  3  Second, we should be aware of the risk of drowning in a sea of data. As Nobel laureate Herbert Simon put it: ‘A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention’.
The rather obvious characteristic of micro data is their size: micro data by construction are an overwhelming amount of information. It is important to look not only at the benefits of micro but also at the risks for policy makers. The risk is that policy makers are bombarded with too many numbers and, as a result, decision making is delayed.