Big Data and its potential role in regional growth: evidence from Great Britain

ABSTRACT

To understand the links between Big Data and economic development is to focus on the knowledge that may be created from Big Data and the knowledge workers who can produce and use this knowledge to maximum economic impact. Using location quotients, this paper finds that the current geographical concentration of employees with skills to generate value from Big Data means that economic opportunities will be centred in the London and South East regions. In contrast, Big Data opportunities will be less important for the already lagging regions in Great Britain.

KEYWORDS:

• Big Data
• knowledge
• regional growth
• regional policy

JEL CLASSIFICATIONS:

• R110 Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
• R12 Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity
• R58 Regional Development Planning and Policy

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

Note: NUTS-1 location quotient analysis.

Source: ONS (2017).

Note: NUTS-2 location quotient analysis.

Source: ONS (2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Alan Turing Institute [grant number EP/N510129/1].