Data Dialogues
Advances in computing and computing technology, mathematics, and statistics have decreased the costs of collecting, processing, and analysing data while at the same time increasing the returns from it. This has led to rapid changes in society, business and markets, and governmental organisation. This talk will briefly discuss the nature of data as an economic good and then present an example –derived from my earlier work – illustrating these properties. We will then dwell on the nature of returns from data and whether markets can exhaust all these returns and if they cannot then what role should policy play. This, of course, has some parallels to earlier debates on intellectual property rights. I will discuss the nature and incentives of various entities involved in the data value chain and how they will strategically respond to various market and policy interventions. I will end with presenting some thoughts on why data exchanges are ideas worth pursuing and how they can be designed keeping individual incentives in mind.
Dr. Nishant Chadha has a B. Tech degree from IIT Kanpur and a M.A and PhD degrees in Economics from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is currently the Head of Research and India Development Foundation, an independent economic policy research organisation based in Gurgaon. His current research interests are in technology policy including – competition and business regulation issues in digital markets, privacy and data protection and the Indian start-up ecosystem. Another strand of his research focuses on the use of novel data for policy research. His academic writings have been published in reputed national and international journals. His popular writings have appeared in reputed publications like Business Standard and The Economic Times.
