A Scale Estimation and Structural Analysis of China’s Data Factor: From the Perspective of Information Value Chain

Abstract

Abstract: Data is a key production factor in the digital economy era. Estimating and analyzing the scale of data elements and their income distribution can help to correctly understand the current level of digital economy development in China and provide a data foundation for the related researches. The existing researches mostly focus on the production cost or market value of data elements, lacking estimation methods constructed from the perspective of the information value chain that fully consider the entire process of data value formation and release. Through improving the existing estimation methods, this paper conducts a calculation of the data element investment in various provinces from 2012 to 2019. The results show that China’s data element investment reached 2.05 trillion yuan in 2019, an increase of 1.35 times from 871.2 billion yuan in 2012, with an average annual growth rate of 13.02%. China’s investment in data elements exhibits such significant characteristics as regional inequality, etc., which may lead to a widening gap in the stock of data elements among the provinces; that is not conducive to the high-quality development of the digital economy. The above results fully demonstrate that the importance of data elements in economic growth and initial income distribution is constantly increasing, and the relevant basic systems and policy measures should be implemented as soon as possible.

Key words: data factor, employees' wage, fixed asset investment, income distribution

CLC Number:

F061.2

XU Xiang, TIAN Xiao-xuan, LIKE Ao-bo, CHEN Bin-kai. A Scale Estimation and Structural Analysis of China’s Data Factor: From the Perspective of Information Value Chain[J]. Contemporary Finance & Economics, 2024, 0(4): 3-16.

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