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Capitalizing Data: Case Studies of Tax Forms and Individual Credit Reports

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  • Rachel Soloveichik

Abstract

Early papers on capitalizing data focused on complex digital data that are stored on supercomputers and managed by highly skilled computer scientists (Statistics Canada 2019) (Eurostat 2020) (Coyle 2022) (Calderon and Rassier 2022) (Mitchell et al. 2022). This paper studies two very different types of data: tax forms and individual credit reports. Both types of data are simple text records that can be stored on any computer or even on paper (Brenton 1964) and managed by workers with only a high school degree (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2022a) (Weedmark 2021). Despite their simplicity, these two data types are expensive to create. This paper estimates that tax forms had a creation cost of $0.4 trillion in 2017 and individual credit reports had a creation cost of $0.6 trillion in 2017.

Suggested Citation

  • Rachel Soloveichik, 2023. "Capitalizing Data: Case Studies of Tax Forms and Individual Credit Reports," BEA Papers 0116, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    • Handle: RePEc:bea:papers:0116
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    File URL: https://www.bea.gov/system/files/papers/BEA-WP2023-7.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Ana M. Aizcorbe & David M. Byrne & Daniel E. Sichel, 2019. "Getting Smart About Phones : New Price Indexes and the Allocation of Spending Between Devices and Services Plans in Personal Consumption Expenditures," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2019-012, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    2. Ballance, Joshua & Clifford, Robert & Shoag, Daniel, 2020. "“No more credit score”: Employer credit check bans and signal substitution," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
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    Cited by:

    1. Rachel Soloveichik, 2024. "Private Funding of “Free” Data: A Theoretical Framework," BEA Papers 0125, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    2. Rachel Soloveichik, 2024. "Studies on the Value of Data," BEA Papers 0124, Bureau of Economic Analysis.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • E01 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General - - - Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

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