The Data Economy: Market Size and Global Trade Diane Coyle (University of Cambridge) Wendy Li (Moon Economics Institute) Paper prepared for the 36th IARIW Virtual General Conference August 23-27, 2021 Session 23: National Accounts Time: Thursday, August 26, 2021 [16:30-18:30 CEST] The Data Economy: Market Size and Global Trade Diane Coyle1 and Wendy Li2 Running title: The Data Economy Abstract Large online platforms using data operate globally. Valuing data is problematic, yet this is crucial for informed policy decisions. We demonstrate a novel sectoral methodology for estimating the economic value of markets for data, estimating the market size for data in the global hospitality industry at US$43.2 billion in 2018. The scale of data flows affects the international division of labor, with important policy implications. With many jurisdictions introducing different data protection and trade regimes, affecting data access by market participants, we present a typology of countries and discuss their ability to benefit from data value creation. JEL Codes: O3, F1, F2 Key words: data, digital, trade, data centers, platforms 1 University of Cambridge;
[email protected]. Coyle receives funding from the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence. 2 Moon Economics Institute;
[email protected] 1 1. Introduction Data has an important and growing role in the modern economy, raising questions in several policy domains. It has become an issue in trade, as underlined by announcements such as the latest United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement on digital trade and Japan’s announcement on Data Free Flow with Trust for the 2019 G20. Data has also become a key asset for innovation, as documented by many recent studies of online platforms and interviews with executives (eg Niebel et al 2018, Lopez, 2016).