In the digital age, households have become firms, and, in turn, producers hire the households’ services directly. Seemingly, free products and services have also emerged. All this calls for a revision of a number of assumptions behind GDP as a measure of the population’s well-being. What exactly is the digital economy is an issue still under discussion. According to the Organization for the Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the focus is on digital transactions, that is, those that order or deliver products using digital means. According to this definition, one important feature of digitization is the massiveness of peer-to-peer services intermediated by platforms such as Airbnb, Uber, or eBay, which facilitate transactions of goods and services. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), in turn, defines the digital economy as the use of digital information. Working groups of international experts are being convened to elaborate on these definitions and to propose a general framework for measuring the digital economy. The structural changes associated with digitization result in the emergence of new occupations and, at the same time, the decline or replacement of some jobs. Together with this, the costs of job search are falling, speeding up the process of matching demand and supply. Thus, impacts on productivity might be observed via the exchange of knowledge and the development of more efficient processes. In the financial area, digitization is redesigning the traditional payment systems, while drawing attention to concepts such as crypto-currencies and digital money.

  In 2017 we published our first effort to measure research and development as a productive asset in the National Accounts.   In addition, we recently began to explore new administrative data such as electronic invoices from the Tax Office, which will complement the country’s national and regional statistics. The results of these projects will be included in the release of the 2018 benchmark compilation, scheduled for 2021.   This year, we published a second effort to evaluate Chile’s value added in international trade, which identified the presence of heterogeneity among the various industries. This will allow improving the inputoutput estimates and the description of the productive interrelations of the Chilean economy. During this Conference we will consider the experiences of Germany and Portugal in having a microdata repository that gives access to third parties, for analysis and research, with due protection of confidential information. In a similar fashion, we are developing an institutional Data Warehouse, strengthening the technological architecture and infrastructure that will allow us to organize, integrate and analyze a large amount of information, enhancing the construction of indicators and applied research in an efficient and timely manner. The Third Conference on Statistics Spaces for reflection and dialogue such as the one that this day-and-a-half provides, are essential to deepen and improve our understanding of the phenomena described. Throughout the sessions, we hope learn about the progress made by international organizations, other central banks, statistical offices and researchers in these areas.