central bank of chile october 2019 third statistics conference : “ measuring the economy in the digital age ” opening remarks by mario marcel, governor of the central bank of chile october 1 - 2, 2019 – santiago, chile good morning, it is a great pleasure to welcome you to the third statistics conference organized by the central bank of chile ( cbc ), on “ measuring the economy in the digital age ” that brings together distinguished experts on macro statistics from many agencies and countries around the globe. this conference follows the one on “ statistics for financial and monetary analysis ” in 2015 and on “ measuring the economy in a globalized world ” in 2017 and it is becoming a landmark event for the cbc, and i hope for all participants as well. the conference we are opening today will address the opportunities and challenges that digitalization imposes on us in interpreting and analyzing increasingly dynamic economic and financial phenomena. the digital economy digitization is progressively changing the way we understand our world, by creating new business models and processes, generating new smart products and services, with lower costs and more timely delivery, all of which is reshaping consumer behavior. major questions are emerging about the ability of our conventional toolkit to measure economic activity in the face of such changes. digital products, services and means of economic interaction are making the task of identifying economic phenomena more challenging, especially for economic and financial statistics. traditionally, economic transactions were governed by the interaction between producers and households. 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

, it is fundamental for central banks to have the quantitative tools to solve and estimate these complex models. the paper by marco del negro, william chen, shlok goyal, ethan matlin, donggyu lee, rebeca sarfati, and sikata sengupta will show us one of the first steps toward achieving this goal. to end that session, the paper by benjamin garcia, mario giarda, and carlos lizama, will show us the current state of a hank model developed for chile and will analyze the average and the distributional effects of fiscal transfers on consumption in the presence of household heterogeneity. on the second day, we will continue the study of the role of heterogeneity in policy design in the session " heterogeneity and economic policy ". the paper by felipe alves and gianluca violante sheds light on different monetary policy rules that focus on different parts of wealth distribution, with an emphasis on the unequal costs of inflation. on the other hand, the paper by valerie ramey, jacob orchard, and johannes wieland will offer an alternative perspective on the role of household heterogeneity in macroeconomics, arguing that the consumption responses estimated at the micro level are not necessarily consistent with the macroeconomic responses of consumption in the us during the great recession. the last academic session of the conference named " financial markets and monetary policy " focuses on the role of financial markets, firm - level and bank - level heterogeneity in shaping the transmission channels of monetary policy. the work by boragan aruoba, andres fernandez, bernabe lopez - martin, will lu, and felipe saffie studies the financial channel of monetary policy, showing that the response of firm - level employment and investment to monetary policy shocks heavily depends on firms'financial conditions. the last paper of the session, by dean corbae and pablo d´erasmo, studies monetary policy design in a detailed model of a banking sector with heterogeneous banks. finally, the keynote lecture by novel price laureate thomas sargent and the policy panel composed of james bullard, esther george, claudio borio, and pablo garcia, will for sure shed some light on the importance of all these topics for current monetary policy and its expected evolution, including important questions that may remain unanswered. 5. acknowledgements 4 / 5 bis - central bankers'speeches i would like to especially thank gianluca violante for