Abstract:Promoting the market allocation of data elements is the key to realize the value of data resources,which drives the high-quality development of digital economy.Based on the literature review,this study first analyses the theoretical process of market allocation of data elements,and divides the whole process into two stages:market-based construction and value-based allocation.According to the proposed theoretical model,this study designs the network DEA model with additional intermediate inputs to calculate the market allocation efficiency of data elements of 30 provincial administrative regions in China from 2019 to 2020.Moreover,by Malmquist index analysis,we further investigate the dynamic changes of both market allocation efficiency of data elements and total factor productivity in China.The study finds that during the period of 2019 to 2020,the market allocation efficiency of data elements in China is on an upward trend.The efficiency of value-based allocation stage reached a higher level than that of the market-based allocation stage.This finding suggests that the orderly opening of public data and the construction of data trading platform will still be the focus in improving the market allocation efficiency of data elements in the future.The results of the study further indicates that China's total factor productivity increased significantly-both the technology progress and the improvement of market allocation efficiency of data elements had a positive effect on improving total factor productivity,and the latter driving force is more critical to promoting the improvement of total factor productivity.