Lazard CEO and Chairman Peter Orszag Authors Essay in The Atlantic

On September 17, The Atlantic published an essay by Lazard CEO and Chairman Peter Orszag, “The Economy Is Turning Into a Black Box,” in which he examines the growing challenges to government statistics. The factors undermining reliability include declining survey participation rates, chronic underfunding, and slow releases of official data.

Peter argues that these flaws have profound consequences, delaying critical policymaking and skewing economic indicators. He highlights the untapped potential of leveraging private-sector data to supplement traditional approaches: "An incredible range of sophisticated private sources—including real-time payroll data, online transaction records, and consumer-spending databases—offer alternative sources of fine-grained, up-to-the-minute data that could, under the right conditions, be used to supplement a survey-based approach and provide a more dynamic and accurate picture of the state of the economy."
 
By blending government surveys with private-sector insights, Peter calls for modernizing America’s data systems to improve policy decisions, market functioning, and public confidence.
 
Read the full essay here.