IEM Lab Innovations in Economic Measurement HBS AI Institute

Innovations in Economic Measurement Lab

Measuring an economy
in motion.

We combine artificial intelligence and big data to develop the next generation of economic measures.

Explore our work
Cambridge, MA AI · Big Data · Economics
01 Our mission

The economy changes faster than traditional statistics can capture.

IEM Lab builds new measurement systems from the digital traces of economic life. By pairing large-scale data with the rapidly expanding capabilities of AI, we turn messy, high-frequency information into public evidence—rigorous enough for research, timely enough for decisions.

From papers to production

Build living measures.

Statistics that update with the economy, improve through use, and inform decisions in real time.
01

Measure now.

Capture the economy as it changes—not months or years after the fact.

02

Publish continuously.

Turn research into transparent statistics and tools that stay current.

03 ↺

Learn in production.

Let every release improve the method—and give policymakers evidence for decisions today.

02 Current work

Four projects.
One measurement frontier.

Our research agenda spans open data infrastructure, labor markets, real-time trade policy, and universal classification.

01

Infrastructure · Open data

Living CPI Data

An AI-driven aggregator that continuously finds, cleans, and shares official CPI data.

AI agents scour the web for official CPI releases and basket weights, expand and connect data sources, clean and standardize their structure, check for errors, and design new visualizations. Our goal is to build the most comprehensive and interconnected global database of CPIs ever assembled.

Launching SoonAlberto Cavallo
02

Labor · AI economy

The Human Work Behind AI

Measuring hiring and wages in the fast-growing market for AI training data.

A Market for Human Expertise documents the emerging demand for occupation-specific knowledge used to train intelligent systems.

Private draftAlberto Cavallo · Zoe CullenCollaborator preview
03

Trade · Real-time data

Tariff Tracker II

Tracking how the new round of 2026 tariffs moves through prices and supply chains.

Private draftAlberto Cavallo · Franco VazquezCollaborator preview
04

AI · Classification

Zero-Training Classifier

A flexible AI classifier that adapts to any classification system—without pre-training.

From COICOP to Harmonized System codes, a general-purpose tool for mapping unstructured economic data into established taxonomies.

Launching SoonAlberto Cavallo · Franco Vazquez
03 People

Innovation grounded in
experience.

Economists combining deep expertise, new technology, and a practical approach to building better economic measures.

Alberto Cavallo

Principal Investigator

Alberto Cavallo

Professor, Harvard Business School
Franco Vazquez

Pre-doctoral Fellow

Franco Vazquez

Innovations in Economic Measurement Lab
Christina Jarymowycz

Assistant Director of Labs

Christina Jarymowycz

HBS AI Institute

Research collaborators

Zoe Cullen

Professor
Harvard Business School

Santiago A. Saldívar

Research Associate, Economics
OpenAI

04 Our Story

Fifteen years of seeing the economy differently.

IEM Lab carries forward a research tradition that began by using millions of online prices to reinvent inflation measurement. Today, AI opens the same possibility across the economy.

Billion Prices Project

Online data changes how inflation can be measured.

Pricing Lab

Collaborations with companies reveal how firms set prices.

Innovations in Economic Measurement (IEM) Lab

AI expands the frontier of economic measurement.

Measure. Test. Improve.

Better statistics
are built by doing.

Explore the projects ↗