LONDON, May 1 — Music apps such as Spotify and multiplayer online games might give central bankers just as a good a sense of what’s going on in the economy as traditional surveys, the chief economist at the Bank of England says.
Andy Haldane said the rise of digital leisure might help policymakers crack the problem of understanding the mood of consumers, whose spending drives the economy.
Haldane, in the text of a speech published yesterday, said data on music downloads from Spotify was already being used by researchers, along with techniques applied to the words of songs, to provide an indicator of people’s sentiment.
“Intriguingly, the resulting index of sentiment does at least as well in tracking consumer spending as the Michigan survey of consumer confidence,” he said, referring to a closely watched monthly survey in the United States.
