The U.K.’s central bank has announced that it plans to use a leading internet search engine to follow consumer trends in the country and influence fiscal policy, according to The Daily Telegraph. On Monday, the Bank of England said in its quarterly bulletin that Google has become “an increasingly useful source of information about economic behavior,” and that policymakers would begin using the search engine to analyze consumer demand over time. Such methods have also been implemented to track labor and housing markets.
The bank said, “Internet search data have the potential to be useful for economic policy marking,” continuing, “Monitoring current economic activity closely is an important aspect of policymaking, but official economic statistics are generally published with a lag.” The announcement comes as the BDO reported that its index of output for the U.K. economy edged up in May to 98.2 from 97.6 the previous month, which marked the 11th consecutive reading below the average trend for growth of 100, adds Bloomberg. The group said that economic growth during the rest of the year would be “unspectacular,” and said that policymakers “should not discount the possibility of a further injection of quantitative easing to provide some momentum to growth.”
Click here to read the story on the BOE bulletin from The Daily Telegraph.
Click here for coverage of Hayward’s recommendation from Bloomberg News.