Deciphering Local Economic Activity with Corporate Big Data

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the use of corporate big data held by private companies. The advantages and uses for such data sets are: the possibility of setting up various analysis frameworks, the flexibility of the geographical and industrial aggregation unit, and the ability to grasp short-term changes. Specifically, big data is being used to identify companies with high centrality in the network, to construct an input-output table, and to immediately understand the impact of the COVID-19 disaster. In this paper, through the examples of studies analyzing corporate innovation, I show the characteristics of this data that enable us to identify regional strengths that cannot be grasped through conventional analysis. Although big data is expected to have potential for use in policy making, I point out that there are issues to be addressed in terms of the development of an environment in which the data can be used, the development of policy techniques that make use of the analysis, and consistency with the administrative policy formulation framework.