Internalizing Externalities: Designing Effective Data Policies

Many economics journals have recently invested in efforts to archive and curate research data and promote reproducible research. The economics profession has focused relatively less attention on what types of institutions and incentives might encourage and subsidize the creation and sharing of datasets that are likely to encourage novel follow-on research of high social value. This paper describes some examples from other scientific fields of institutions and incentives designed to promote subsequent research and speculates on some potential reforms that could be undertaken within economics to encourage the type of data sharing most likely to encourage socially valuable follow-on research.