A Study on the Economic Drivers of the Data Element

As the development of information technology has entered a new stage, data has become a novel factor of production in the digital economy. With its unique and fundamental economic characteristics, data participate in the production process and brings an innovative driving force to the economy. Thus, how data factors act on production and contribute to economic growth need further study. This article analyses the economic characteristics unique to the data element from the perspective of its causes. In the following parts, we propose three ways in which the data element can be combined with traditional factors of production to drive productive development: value multiplication, input substitution, and resource optimization. Furthermore, the article extends the Cobb Douglas function to investigate the possible paths of the data element economic growth model, and initially constructs a production function model including the data factor to deepen the understanding of the function of the data factor.