Is It “Trade?�? Data Flows and the Digital Economy

Milton L. Mueller, Karl Grindal
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Abstract

This paper is a preliminary attempt to analyze information as a factor of production in international trade. It is a first attempt to get a handle on the direction and balance of information flows. We have obtained quantitative data about Web-related data flows between countries, and we explore how those flows are correlated to trade in goods . Using Telegeography data on “Server Location as a Percentage of Top Websites,” we found that 2/3 of all web traffic is transnational. More than half of the top 100 web sites in 9 of the world’s 13 sub-regions are hosted in the United States. Central Asia and Eastern Europe, for whom 37% and 41% of their most popular websites, respectively, are requested from the US. Even well-developed Western Europe makes almost half of its top 100 web site requests to US-based sites. For US users, on the other hand, only about 26 of the top 100 websites are hosted outside the country, and 20 of them are in Europe.Ironically, East Asia, which has a huge goods trade surplus with the developed economies, particularly with the US, has the largest negative balance in the relationship between incoming and outgoing Web requests. Indeed, we found a very strong negative correlation (-0.878) between web traffic balances and the balance of trade in goods across all subregions. Once these aspects of transnational data flows are quantified, the paper discusses the implications of these findings for policy, especially trade policy. It raises the question whether the goal of a free and open digital economy is best advanced by placing information exchanges in the trade paradigm and pushing for free trade, or by asserting a more general human right to free and open information exchanges across borders, which has social and political as well as economic consequences. These two approaches are not mutually exclusive, of course, but by making these distinctions we clarify the debate over international policy in the digital world.
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是“贸易?”数据流与数字经济
本文是对国际贸易中信息作为生产要素进行分析的初步尝试。这是掌握信息流方向和平衡的第一次尝试。我们获得了国家间网络相关数据流动的定量数据,并探讨了这些数据流动与货物贸易之间的关系。使用Telegeography的“服务器位置占顶级网站的百分比”数据,我们发现三分之二的网络流量是跨国的。在全球13个次区域中,有9个地区的前100个网站中有一半以上是在美国托管的。中亚和东欧,他们最受欢迎的网站分别有37%和41%来自美国。即使是发达的西欧,其前100个网站请求中也有近一半是向美国网站发出的。另一方面,对于美国用户来说,排名前100的网站中只有26个位于美国以外,其中20个位于欧洲。具有讽刺意味的是,与发达经济体,特别是与美国有着巨大商品贸易顺差的东亚,在输入和输出网络请求之间的关系中有着最大的负平衡。事实上,我们发现网络流量平衡与所有次区域货物贸易平衡之间存在非常强的负相关(-0.878)。一旦对跨国数据流动的这些方面进行了量化,本文将讨论这些发现对政策,特别是贸易政策的影响。它提出了这样一个问题:自由和开放的数字经济的目标是通过将信息交换置于贸易范式中并推动自由贸易,还是通过主张更普遍的人权来实现自由和开放的跨境信息交换,这将产生社会和政治以及经济后果。当然,这两种方法并不是相互排斥的,但通过区分这些区别,我们澄清了关于数字世界中国际政策的争论。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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