growth in the euro area, which slowed in the second quarter of 2011 to 0. 2 % quarter on quarter, is expected to be very moderate in the second half of this year. there are signs that previously identified downside risks have been materialising, as reflected in unfavourable evidence from survey data. looking forward, a number of factors seem to be dampening the underlying growth momentum in the euro area, including a moderation in the pace of global demand and unfavourable effects on overall financing conditions and on confidence resulting from ongoing tensions in a number of euro area sovereign debt markets. at the same time, we continue to expect euro area economic activity to benefit from continued positive economic growth in the emerging market economies, as well as from the low short - term interest rates and the various measures taken to support the functioning of the financial sector. in the governing council ’ s assessment, the downside risks to the economic outlook for the euro area are confirmed in an environment of particularly high uncertainty. downside risks notably relate to a further intensification of the tensions in some segments of the financial markets in the euro area and at the global level, as well as to the potential for these pressures to further spill over into the euro area real economy. they also relate to the impact bis central bankers ’ speeches of the still high energy prices, protectionist pressures and the possibility of a disorderly correction of global imbalances. with regard to price developments, euro area annual hicp inflation was 3. 0 % in october according to eurostat ’ s flash estimate, unchanged from september. inflation rates have been at elevated levels since the end of last year, mainly driven by higher energy and other commodity prices. looking ahead, they are likely to stay above 2 % for some months to come, before falling below 2 % in the course of 2012. inflation rates are expected to remain in line with price stability over the policy - relevant horizon. this pattern reflects the expectation that, in an environment of weaker euro area and global growth, price, cost and wage pressures in the euro area should also moderate. the governing council continues to view the risks to the medium - term outlook for price developments as broadly balanced, taking also into account today ’ s decision. on the upside, the main risks relate to the possibility of increases in indirect taxes and administered prices, owing to the need for fiscal consolidation in the coming years. in the current environment, however, inflationary pressure should abate. the main

as a series of conferences on non - traditional data organized by the federal reserve board and the bank of italy ( for example, this year ’ s conference is going to be hosted by the bank of canada in november ). this new world has, of course, set many challenges for central banks and public institutions : on one level, central banks have had to devise specific organizational structures to have a consistent and more efficient approach to the big data and machine learning tools used by each institution. at the same time, they have had to increase their data production, leveraging on non - traditional data to get more timely and high - frequency indicators of economic activity, which are important during unprecedented shocks like the covid19 pandemic. 4. the challenges and risks of data science we need to exert extreme caution when employing these new tools. let me briefly go over some of them. first, big / web data might lose their statistical relevance when they are employed in an unsound way. such data typically entail selection bias because of the features of the population ; increasing see, for example, ‘ big data processing : is there a framework suitable for economists and statisticians? ’, 2017 ieee international conference on big data ( big data ), 2017, pp. 2804 - 2811, doi : 10. 1109 / bigdata. 2017. 8258247. ‘ weaving enterprise knowledge graphs : the case of company ownership graphs. ’ i am thinking of extreme gradient boosting ( xgboost ), which owes its wide popularity to its dominance over several machine learning algorithms rather than to its mathematical properties. amleds are a series of webinars open to all those in the world who are interested in applied machine learning, big data, and natural language processing for economics and in how these techniques and data science can be applied to social science. the sample size will not shrink the sampling error if the estimation algorithm does not correct for this kind of distortion. second, the availability of a huge amount of data raises the importance of its integrity, confidentiality and privacy. personal and company data protection is central to our societies. the sheer amount of personal data now available, and the growing ease with which individual information can be merged across databases, have far - reaching implications for privacy, competition and freedom. indeed, this has prompted the development of regulations concerning the treatment of digital data ( think of the gdpr or the ccpa in california ). rules on data management