, the birth of money enabled them to use a common measure of value, and turned the value of each good into a datum, called a “ price. ” such price data also served as a foundation for the pricing mechanism to adjust the demand and supply of goods. moreover, money made it much easier for people to trade with each other. under the bartering system, each participant had to find a counterpart with a mutual demand for trading. however, money ’ s intrinsic function of representing value, i. e. its price, has enabled people to trade without necessarily finding such a coincidence. since money contains data about prices, it also made it easier to store wealth by keeping it in the form of money. this feature has also enabled us to do “ inter - temporal trading ", such as obtaining money by selling a fish yesterday and using it for the 1 / 5 bis central bankers'speeches purchase of fruits tomorrow. data utilization today as those episodes suggest, data utilization and the development of the economy have been strongly connected with each other. today it is not an exaggeration to say that every economic activity is inseparable from collecting and processing data. for instance, demand forecasts, and production planning and inventory management by firms, consist of large amounts of data processing. above all, the financial industry is one of the most data - oriented businesses. for example, the operations taking place on the back of our daily payments and settlements via credit cards, debit cards, or deposit accounts, can be regarded as data processing. banks provide financial intermediation services through making complicated decisions and assessments on borrowers, interest rates, and assets for investments, by collecting and analyzing various types of data. insurance companies design insurance policies and set their fees at appropriate levels by also collecting and analyzing data. these insurance schemes allow society to efficiently redistribute risks among various entities, and enhance its resiliency against future uncertainty. as such, the financial and insurance industries have indeed promoted economic growth in modern and postmodern society. ii. it revolution and the potential of big data the emergence of big data unlike tangible assets, information and data never depreciate. data also has an interesting feature ; that is, the marginal benefit of data may even increase as more data is collected and accumulated. in the past, collecting, storing, and processing, large amounts of data had been difficult in many cases due to technological constraints. today however, the it revolution has been changing the situation

jean - pierre roth : the swiss economy and financial centre – successes and new challenges summary of a speech by mr jean - pierre roth, chairman of the governing board of the swiss national bank and chairman of the board of directors of the bank for international settlements, at the handelskammer schweiz - osterreich und liechtenstein ( foreign trade chamber for switzerland - austria and liechtenstein ), vienna, 25 february 2008. the complete speech can be found in german on the swiss national bank ’ s website ( www. snb. ch ). * * * mid - 2003 saw the start of a remarkable, broad - based economic upswing in switzerland which is still underway, even if business cycle uncertainty has increased in the recent period. a number of factors indicate that the long - term growth outlook, too, has improved for switzerland. these factors include the increasing globalisation of our economy and the opening up of the labour market to the eu. the swiss economy is participating in globalisation through increased direct investment as well as growing foreign trade. at the same time, there is more competition on the domestic goods market, although a fair bit still remains to be done in this area to complement the opening up of the labour market to the eu. globalisation and market opening present companies and economic policymakers with challenges that become particularly acute when setbacks occur – as in the case of the current international financial market turbulence. although the international money markets have now calmed somewhat, we have not yet seen the end of the turmoil on the financial markets – neither for the financial institutions involved nor for the international economy. after four years of strong growth and low inflation, this means more difficult times ahead for the swiss economy. due to the turbulence on the financial markets, the economic outlook has become more uncertain while, at the same time, inflationary pressure has heightened over the past few months – not such a comfortable position for a central bank. a positive element remains the achievements of the past few years, which have laid the foundations for a higher long - term growth trend. these need to be further improved in order to retain switzerland as a dynamic business location.