数据资本与经济增长路径

Data Capital and Economic Growth Path

本文定义数据化的生产要素为数据资本,重点关注其在生产效率和数据处理效率上的创新特性。本文用产业组织的创新模型为数据资本构建微观基础,并将其引入内生增长模型,以分析数据资本对经济增长的直接影响和溢出效应。本文研究发现模型存在非平衡的稳态增长路径,其中数据资本的稳态增速高于其他类型资本及总产出的稳态增速。本文还发现,将数据资本和ICT资本相区分后,均衡的稳态经济增长率比只考虑ICT资本时有所降低,这与近年来多数实证研究的发现相一致。通过数值模拟得出的中国数据资本存量水平与根据实际数据估算的结果比较接近,2019年超过9万亿元,占社会总资本的5%左右,且近年来增速显著高于总产出增速,充分反映了数据资本积累拉动宏观经济增长的潜在能力。

Economic growth in the digital age differs from the past in two ways:new factors of productions have been introduced and new patterns of production and economic growth have been created.A new economic growth model that takes these changes into account can help us better understand the impact of the new elements of the digital age on economic development.In this paper,we define data capital and explain how it affects the production process.Data capital is defined as data and digitized information that are carried by modern information networks and databases,use information and communication technologies,and are processed and transformed into production factors.Data capital combined with ICT capital becomes a compound input into production,and it increases social production efficiency by improving firms'allocation of production factors.The latter effect features two innovations:it gradually increases firms'production efficiency through technological innovations,and it increases the industry's ability to process new data,which indicates the efficiency of data capital formation.Given these two effects,it is important to understand the relationship between data capital growth,the digitization of production factors,and economic growth.In China's high-quality growth stage,data capital will play a bigger role than traditional capital and ICT capital.We build an endogenous growth model to analyze the direct impact and spillover effect of data capital on economic growth.We first construct the microeconomic structure of how data capital affects firm production as a direct input of production and by improving firms'business decisions.By smoothing the random innovation process,we eliminate the firm stochastic heterogeneity and build a micro foundation for the following macroeconomic analysis.The micro structure suggests that the smoothed innovation process is comparable to the“learning by doing”process in both technological changes and capital formation.Finally,we construct a new production function with data capital and other traditional factors of production and introduce standard household preferences to build an endogenous growth model.We prove that there exists a non-balanced steady state and examine its characteristics.Using different methods to input data capital and ICT capital into the production process avoids the usual problem of exaggerating the impact of ICT capital on economic growth,which occurs because ICT serves both as capital and technology in the production function.We find that in the steady state of our growth model,data capital grows faster than other types of output.The steady-state aggregate growth rate of this model lies between traditional economic growth models without data capital and ICT capital,and economic growth models with only ICT capital.This theoretical finding is in line with recent empirical studies suggesting that the traditional ICT model overestimates the impact of ICT capital on total factor production,resulting in inflated economic growth rate forecasts.We then estimate China's stock of data capital,first using numerical simulation with our model and then using actual data.The results are similar,but the estimation based on real data is higher,which can be mostly explained by the difference in statistics and the fact that China's economy is in transition and has not yet achieved a steady-state of capital accumulation.This article makes three policy recommendations.First,we strongly encourage bureaus of statistics to add data capital accounting to their digital economy accounting systems and to measure firms'data capital by their actual cost.Second,to achieve the bi-circling of the Chinese economy,the Chinese government should construct more data capital infrastructure during its new infrastructure campaign,establish a well-functioning national data market,and strengthen cooperation with other economies on data capital transactions.Third,legislators should pay more attention to the property right protection of data capital,especially regarding the prevention of data abuse and securing the proper distribution of profits,which will significantly affect the economy's growth potential in the long term.