# 1. Introduction

Timely and consistent statistics are essential to inform and monitor economic, environmental, and social development. Yet to be used in decision making, statistics need to be more than of good quality. They need to be timely and trusted. <mark>Trust in official statistics comes, broadly speaking, from two sources (Brackfield, 2011). The statistics themselves must be trustworthy and credible. Next, the institution producing the statistics needs to be trusted. Openness and transparency affect trust in official statistics through both pathways. Transparency allows the public to assess the methods and data used and increases trust in the organization itself. I</mark> n addition to being important for trust in official statistics, statistical transparency also yields an attractive return. Research in middle income contexts demonstrates that the availability of quality, transparent, and timely disseminated macroeconomic and financial data reduces sovereign borrowing costs on international capital markets. Adherence to the Special Data Dissemination Standards (SDDS), for instance, lowers borrowing costs by 50 basis points as it reassures international investors on the reliability and serviceability of a country’s economic and financial data (Cady, 2005).

In this paper, we examine two aspects of statistical quality, microdata collection and access. We focus on microdata for three reasons. They are an important source of data, especially for researchers, who without it often would not have the ability to carry out their work on nationally representative samples. The <mark>demand for readily available microdata can be illustrated with the 2017 Djibouti Household Survey. Its data have been downloaded 2078 times even though the data was only uploaded on the World Bank microdata library in June 2019. After 20 months since the data have been publicly released, Google scholar already gives 290 hits of academic articles that have been prepared using this data set (checked on 23 Feb 2021). The inflow of research with new data strengthens the analytical capacity of the national statistical system and has huge marginal gains especially for lower income countries that are less likely to conduct household surveys.</mark><sup>2</sup> <mark>The second reason to focus on publicly releasing microdata is that by not doing so, the public use value of the data in research is foregone. This value can be significant. The cost of collecting the data is sunk (taxpayers have already paid for it) and the marginal cost of creating another copy of the data base is negligible. The benefits on the other hand can be substantial. I</mark> ncreased accessibility to data has been related to the MENA region’s chronic low-growth syndrome and Arezki et al. (2020) estimate that the region’s lack of data transparency has resulted in losses of income per person ranging between 7% and 14%.

The third reason to focus on the availability of microdata is because it demonstrates a credible commitment to transparency. Between 2005 and 2008 MENA, was the only region globally to

> 2 Dang et al. (2019) provide evidence that countries with higher incomes more frequently implement household surveys.

2