ABSTRACT
The digital transformation and the emergence of a data-driven economy in which data is the essential factor of production has profound implications for the role for the state as economic agent, as regulator, and as an active protagonist in the contest to capture international economic rents that are newly contestable in this economy. Modern technology enables the “datafication” of virtually every aspect of human social, political, and economic activity. Data is powering technologies that are disrupting markets and changing the way in which humans compete with machines. The expansion of the role of the state in the new economic and social environments created by digitalisation drives off the strong public good characteristics of data and knowledge and the risks of market failures and social harms that are pervasive in the new digital environment. This expanded role for the state not only pushes back against decades of economic orthodoxy that advocated for minimal governmental intervention in economic activity but entails a ramping up of government regulatory capacity and brings states into new rivalries with geo-economic and geopolitical overtones.
