“When we take out a mortgage, open a deposit account or choose between a fixed or variable mortgage rate, we’re thinking about what works best for us and our families. Yet together, all these personal decisions show us the bigger economic picture.”

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From your mortgage to the balance of payments: how everyday decisions shape economic statistics

Buying a coffee, filling up with petrol, shopping online... On their own, the choices we make every day tell us little about the economy. But taken together with thousands or millions of similar decisions, they say a great deal about us.

This is how many of the key figures we use to understand the economy are produced: household borrowing and deposits, interest rates, international transactions and the financial position of businesses. Economic statistics don’t come from some abstract place called “the economy” – they start with decisions people and businesses make every day.

In this episode of CIENxCIEN, we follow a fictional household’s statistical footprint to explore where the data go and how they are used along the way. Lucía Noblejas, Lara Rubio, Cristina González and Ricardo Arcos take us through the different areas of the Banco de España’s Statistics Department, showing us that there are millions of everyday stories behind the key economic statistics.

Let's begin with one of the biggest financial decisions a household can make: buying a home and taking out a mortgage. A single transaction only tells us one household’s story. But looking at thousands of them allows us to analyse how borrowing is changing, what interest rates lenders are charging and how preferences are shifting between fixed or variable rates. Once this information has been checked and aggregated, it also offers insights into how monetary policy decisions feed through to households and businesses.

Our data journey takes us far beyond Spain’s borders. A tourist arriving from Rome, a holiday in Lisbon or a fuel delivery to a Spanish petrol station all leave their mark on the balance of payments. Through these everyday examples we discover how Spain’s economic ties with the rest of the world are measured and why official statistics are more than a collection of numbers. They are compiled using common rules, methodologies and criteria to give us reliable information that can be compared across countries.

Businesses leave their mark too. The data they provide shed light on trends in sales, employment, borrowing and financing costs across different sectors. But the information flows both ways. Through the Central Balance Sheet Data Office (CBSO) and tools such as BExplora, that information makes its way back to businesses and the public as useful insights for comparison, analysis and informed decision-making. With information going back to 1984, the CBSO also allows us to explore how businesses have changed over different economic cycles.

At every stage of this process, producing useful statistics means ensuring data quality, applying sound methods and keeping information secure. Data on individual customers or businesses are not published as such, but processed and released in aggregate form.

So, our data journey comes full circle. The data we generate as individuals, households, businesses and institutions come back to us as statistics that give us a clearer picture of our circumstances, show how we compare with others and help us make more informed choices.

Gold is not the Banco de España's only treasure. We have another asset of immense value: the data we collect, process and share to help us better understand our economy.