Research Projects

The project research focuses on the Law & Economics of Big Data and Tech Platforms, which are new forms of quasi-public goods. Big Data (BD) is a valuable source of information that can be used by numerous entities simultaneously, making it 'non-rivalrous'. BD services are widely used for marketing, price discrimination, innovation, medical and scientific research. However, BD services are only partially 'non-excludable' due to encryption technology. BD is widely hailed as a'renewable input' for combinatorial innovations, as its predictive power and benefits increase exponentially with its size and diversity. However, BD is vulnerable to the problem of 'anti-common', a market failure. Aggregating BD from multiple and diverse sources is a challenging task, and the market worth of tech giants gives them a monopolistic edge over other players and consumers. The project aims to develop an analytical framework to examine the nature aggregation problem involved in generating Big Data and market failures in BD under different market structures. The economic implications of the two-sided monopoly enjoyed by tech platforms as quasi-public goods are also examined.