Measuring data as an asset

Data are shown to generate efficiency gains but to have been unevenly shared across firms and households, and the subpar economic performance of most advanced economies (prior to the pandemic) has been attributed to increased market power originating, at least in part, from the increased use of data. To sharpen our understanding of these divergent perceptions of the modern digital age, this paper puts the recent increase in use of digitised information, i.e., data, into an economic framework amenable to measurement and analysis. Data are conceptualised as an intangible asset: a storable factor input that is only partially captured in existing macroeconomic and financial statistics. Our proposed framework treats data as an intangible asset that contributes to final production in an economy. This paper provides the conceptual groundwork that is needed for defining and measuring data investments. We also provide a review of methods that are used to measure data, and we offer an experimental implementation of our framework. We also develop preliminary estimates of data assets intended to fully encompass the “intelligence” or “knowledge” generated by the use of data that are coherent with national accounts data at the industry-level of analysis as well as with measures of intangibles developed by EUKLEMS-INTANProd.