often differ across jurisdictions and data domains. therefore, international cooperation is to be encouraged as far as possible. technologies enabling the processing of personal data are already available. in 2019, google made available its differential privacy library, which allows sensitive data to be processed privately. to reach these welfare - improving goals, further investment from both the public and the private sector are required. close cooperation between the private sector, which typically owns most of the new data, and the public sector, which uses ( or would like to use ) such data for policy reasons and for the common good, will also be essential. this is why central banks have always made great efforts when it comes to collecting and analysing data. throughout its history, banca d ’ italia has drawn extensively on data published by the national statistical institute and other national and international agencies. it has also been an active producer of statistics, not only on banking, financial and fiscal variables, but also on firms and households. banca d ’ italia has been collecting micro - level statistical information on companies since the early 1950s. these data are now enriched with non - traditional sources such as social media, blogs, newspapers, and private company datasets6. 5. conclusions let me conclude my talk by thanking, once again, all the speakers and participants for joining us today, even in this virtual fashion. we hope to welcome you here in rome in person in the near future. special thanks go to those who have helped to organize this workshop, which brings together leading economists, statisticians, artificial intelligence and machine - learning specialists, data scientists from about fifty - five central banks and fifteen participants from universities and government agencies. this guarantees a broad variety of perspectives and a lively discussion. i am sure that you are going to have a very interesting and productive workshop. such as the real estate website, immobiliare. it, and the mortgage website, mutuionline.

ben s bernanke : economic outlook and recent monetary policy actions testimony by mr ben s bernanke, chairman of the board of governors of the federal reserve system, before the joint economic committee, us congress, washington dc, 4 october 2011. * * * chairman casey, vice chairman brady, and other members of the committee, i appreciate this opportunity to discuss the economic outlook and recent monetary policy actions. it has been three years since the beginning of the most intense phase of the financial crisis in the late summer and fall of 2008, and more than two years since the economic recovery began in june 2009. there have been some positive developments : the functioning of financial markets and the banking system in the united states has improved significantly. manufacturing production in the united states has risen nearly 15 percent since its trough, driven substantially by growth in exports ; indeed, the u. s. trade deficit has been notably lower recently than it was before the crisis, reflecting in part the improved competitiveness of u. s. goods and services. business investment in equipment and software has continued to expand, and productivity gains in some industries have been impressive. nevertheless, it is clear that, overall, the recovery from the crisis has been much less robust than we had hoped. recent revisions of government economic data show the recession as having been even deeper, and the recovery weaker, than previously estimated ; indeed, by the second quarter of this year – the latest quarter for which official estimates are available – aggregate output in the united states still had not returned to the level that it had attained before the crisis. slow economic growth has in turn led to slow rates of increase in jobs and household incomes. the pattern of sluggish growth was particularly evident in the first half of this year, with real gross domestic product ( gdp ) estimated to have increased at an average annual rate of less than 1 percent. some of this weakness can be attributed to temporary factors. notably, earlier this year, political unrest in the middle east and north africa, strong growth in emerging market economies, and other developments contributed to significant increases in the prices of oil and other commodities, which damped consumer purchasing power and spending ; and the disaster in japan disrupted global supply chains and production, particularly in the automobile industry. with commodity prices having come off their highs and manufacturers ’ problems with supply chains well along toward resolution, growth in the second half of the year seems likely to be more rapid than in the first half. however, the incoming data suggest that other,