Analysis on Mechanism of Data as a New Growth Engine for China
In the new stage of China's economy development,identifying new drivers of economic growth is crucial for sustaining long-term development goals.From the perspective of production factors,traditional inputs(e.g.,capital,labor,and human capital)appear to have diminishing potential to support future growth.Amid the rapid expansion of the digital economy,data has emerged as a pivotal production factor,underscoring the importance of measuring its value and contri-bution to economic growth.Data has transitioned from a by-product of economic activities into a strategic asset that is actively collected,pro-cessed,or even generated specifically for economic ends.Exploring data capital's contribution to economic growth re-quires a clear understanding of the data value chain.This value chain is structured in three stages.The first stage involves data collection,where raw information from various economic scenarios is systematically recorded.In the second stage,data undergoes cleaning and storage processes,which remove redundancies,standardize formats,and enhance quality,producing refined data.The third stage involves applying algorithms to refined data,facilitating value extraction and mak-ing it usable across production contexts;we refer to this final output as data capital.At this stage,data attains productive utility and can thus be considered a production factor.Data companies,therefore,trade data as a production input within data markets,supplying product companies that le-verage data to improve efficiency.Through this process,product companies generate significant amounts of information from production activities,and when goods reach consumers,consumption data further enriches this ecosystem.While in-formation naturally arises from various economic activities,it becomes data only after data companies invest resources in its collection and recording.Each new cycle of economic activity yields additional information,which data companies capture as raw data,thereby catalyzing ongoing data production along the value chain.In each economic cycle,data capi-tal grows iteratively,accumulating as a stock of data capital.Newly generated data in each cycle represents the formation of data capital,while the cumulative total forms its stock.Based on such data market framework,this paper examines how the accumulation of data capital impacts China's economic growth,leveraging its non-rivalrous characteristics to drive growth through two main channels:direct effects on production sectors and indirect effects on innovation.By analyzing distinct stages in the formation of data capital-data collection,cleaning and storage,and processing-this study constructs a sampling model of data production and de-velops a growth model based on data capital,which is then solved to determine a balanced growth path.Findings indicate that data capital accelerates economic growth,with its impact intensifying as returns to data scale and substitutability be-tween internal and external data improve.These results imply that the growth contribution of data capital is maximized when its non-rivalrous nature is fully utilized.Data capital can directly drive production-sector growth or indirectly sup-port growth by promoting R&D and innovation.Following our economic model,we further explore how data drives growth in China.Specifically,this paper em-ploys estimates of provincial data capital stocks in China,and our empirical results show three key conclusions.First,data capital's contribution to economic growth varies across stages,with data capital formed in the third stage exerting a more substantial impact on growth than that formed in earlier stages.This suggests that China's data value chain currently exhibits a development gap in data processing and analysis.Second,while data is theoretically non-rival and replicable at zero cost,spatial regression indicates limited spillover effects of data capital in China.This finding suggests two issues:an underdeveloped data factor market in China and insufficient interregional data flow.It also raises the possibility that data's cross-regional and cross-sectoral utility may be lower than theoretical expectations suggest.Third,in our economic model,data capital impacts economic growth through two channels:directly influencing production or indirectly foster-ing R&D and innovation.However,empirical evidence shows that the indirect channel is notably weaker than the direct one,indicating that data capital's potential in innovation activities remains largely untapped.In sum,while data capital has already contributed to accelerating China's economic growth and shows promise as a new driver of future growth,its current impact remains constrained.The fundamental advantage of data's non-rivalrous nature,along with its essential role in fostering R&D and innovation,has yet to be fully observed.
Data CapitalEconomic GrowthSpillover EffectsData Complementarity