Raj Chetty is the Director of Opportunity Insights, a small organization of Harvard-based researchers and policy analysts. In the wake of the current crisis, he and his team have partnered with Womply to launch the first and only tool able to track the economic impacts of COVID-19 on people, businesses, and communities in real time.
Up until now, federal, state, and local leaders have been forced to rely on survey-based data and government statistics for their planning and policy-making. And though this data is certainly valuable, the lag in accumulating it makes it harder to assess sudden economic shocks, such as the one reverberating from COVID-19.
That’s what makes the OI Economic tracker, powered by Womply’s software and data points, so revolutionary. The company has been tracking economic activity and consumer spending for years, offering live information that can meet the immediate and urgent needs of this downturn. The data will be undergoing rigorous academic analysis by economist Raj Chetty and his team at Opportunity Insights.
“The OI Economic Tracker will provide government leaders, policymakers, non-profits, and the public with the tools they need to tackle an economic crisis,” says Chetty. “Rather than waiting weeks to see where the economy is falling and playing catch-up, the new data assembled in this tool offers the capacity to spot economic problems as they emerge and to consider a more targeted policy response.”
Read more about it here.
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