1. Free assets and free services
Agenda item 3d
Advisory Expert Group
27-29 November 2018

2. Free services Note linkage to other agenda points...
Satellite framework on the digital economy
Price and volume
Role of data (barter-type transactions)
Two main aspects to be considered:
How to represent free services
How to value free services

3. How to represent free services
AEG discussion in 2016 considered three main options:
Impute additional output, consumed by households, with current transfer (D75)
Impute final consumption for corporations (advertisers)
Imputed household service (output), barter transacted for services (>> see data paper)
AEG “did not support the proposed imputation of additional consumption of free media services, but would support further research on how to provide additional information on the internet (digital) economy.”

4. How to value free services
Several options considered:
Cost of provision of services
Revenues associated with free services
Value to consumers of free services
In practice research has focused on first two options – hard data vs collection of subjective consumer values

5. Free assets
Examples include software (Linux, R...) and originals (Wikipedia)
Sum of costs approach (or costs to recreate) vs value to consumers (willingness to pay) (>> see paper on measuring economic welfare)
Research into how to measure sum of costs; charateristics of assets and time/level of labour input to produce them
Complications:
Development of ‘free assets’ for commercial gain
Location of the assets