1/ Important paper published by my friend Prof Tonetti (@ChrisTonetti) and his colleague Prof Jones @StanfordGSB. They have rigorously studied the "economics of data" to show that there are large social gains from letting users own and sell their own data. Some key takeaways: 
2/ Jones and Tonetti show that data can be considered a "non-rival" good. Just like ideas, data is not depleted through use. This is in stark contrast to most goods in the economy which are "rival" and can only be used by one person or firm at a time.
3/ Currently, most data is treated like it is a rival good—it is owned by the firm that produces it and is *not* shared. This is functionally equivalent to a firm being given a lifetime patent on an idea and disallowing other firms to use that idea. This is far from optimal.
4/ Jones and Tonetti build an economic model to mathematically prove the affects of different data ownership models. They then numerical model what the real-world might look like. The results are pretty awesome.
5/ "The allocation in which data sharing is outlawed is stunningly inferior: consumption-equiv welfare is only 1/3 that of the social planner... the bulk is from the missing scale effect associated with data sharing. Laws that prohibit such sharing can have dramatic effects" !!!
6/ When data is owned by the firms that produce it (aka Google, FB, Uber etc) data use is distorted in two ways: i) firms use 100% of the data they own, ignoring user privacy concerns; ii) they do not share their data enough fearing creative destruction. This is suboptimal.
7/ When consumers own their own data, they are able to "take their own privacy considerations into account but are incentivized by markets to sell their data broadly to a range of firms, leading them to nearly-optimal allocations." !!!!
8/ These results mirror what is common thinking amongst many crypto-believers and "own your own data" promoters. But those folks never before had a robust economic model to prove why consumer data ownership is good for society. This changes that.
9/ Full paper is available at christophertonetti.com/files/papers/J… People with an "open data" thesis should love this, aka @cburniske @CremeDeLaCrypto @FEhrsam @grosen @jmonegro @njess @_jillruth
10/ Small note: Tonetti has reminded me that this paper is not yet published in an academic journal and has not yet been peer reviewed—it is subject to revision and still a work in progress.
@azeem you will care deeply about this too as this paper implies that “data moats” created by some of today’s superstar companies could end up creating large social losses. Existing American-style anti-trust laws don’t (currently) guard against this... new policies are needed?
