The economics of ownership, access and trade in digital data - JRC Digital Economy Working Paper 2017-01
Despite the rapidly growing volume and economic importance of data in the digital economy, the legal framework for data ownership, access and trade remains incompletely defined in the EU and elsewhere.
De facto data ownership seems to dominate. Fragmented ownership, combined with limited access and trade, inhibits the realisation of the full economic benefits of non-rival data. It may slow down innovation and affect the efficiency of data markets. We examine three potential sources of data market failures: externalities related to economies of scope in data, strategic behaviour of data owners and transaction costs in data exchanges.
We link the legal debate on data ownership with relevant branches of the economics literature, including intellectual property rights economics, the commons and anti-commons literature, models of trade under asymmetric information and multi-sided markets. Economists are inclined to think that well-defined private property rights are a necessary condition for an efficient resource allocation. The underlying question that we explore in this paper is to what extent this view holds for non-rival data.
Would a better specification of data property rights improve efficiency and reduce data market failures? If so, which party should receive these rights and does it matter who receives them?
Our tentative conclusion is that there are no easy answers to these questions and more research is required to bring economics up to speed with recent advances in data collection and analytics technology.
DUCH BROWN Nestor;
MARTENS Bertin;
MULLER-LANGER Frank;
2017-02-28
European Commission
JRC104756
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC104756,
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