Data assets, information uses, and operational efficiency

Changyu Hu, Yuetong Li and Xiaojia Zheng

Applied Economics, 2022, vol. 54, issue 60, 6887-6900

Abstract: This paper studies the impact of data assets on firms’ operational efficiency, aiming to show how data assets work in business operations and highlight their key value. Given the rich content, data assets can increase operational efficiency as it embeds firms with valuable information used to optimize resource deployment in production and improve customer relationship management. Using a sample of A-share listed firms in China from 2003 to 2019, we empirically show a consistent and significantly positive relationship between a text-based measure of data assets and operational efficiency. Moreover, the positive effect of data assets on operational efficiency is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises (SOEs), diversified firms with redundant internal information, and firms in a more complex external information environment (i.e. more volatile earnings of the industry or a larger dispersion of analysts’ forecasts). As further evidenced by higher turnover ratios of inventory and lower turnover ratios of accounts receivables in firms with data assets, we verify that data assets lead to efficient production management and flexible customer relationship management. Overall, these results suggest that data assets are valuable in the efficiency improvement of firms by facilitating information uses.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2022.2084021 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:applec:v:54:y:2022:i:60:p:6887-6900

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2022.2084021

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().