Valuing Data as an Asset

In the twenty-first century, the most valuable firms in the world are valued primarily for their data. This makes data central to finance. Data are an important asset to price; they change firm valuation and are a key consideration for an entrepreneur starting a new firm. The rise of the data economy is changing the sources of revenue and sources of risk (Lambrecht and Tucker, 2015; Chiou and Tucker, 2017; Goldfarb and Tucker, 2019). The industrial-age measurement and valuation tools commonly used in finance need updating for a new era. The goal of this article is to describe a set of tools to measure and value data and point to unanswered questions, where more work is needed.