DIGITAL RESOURCE CURSE IN THE CONTEXT OF DATAFICATION: ESSAYS ON THE NEW DIGITAL INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOR
Authors: Bulatova Olena , Oliinyk Kyrylo 
Published: December 2024

The purpose of the study is to generalize approaches to the interpretation of the categories of “inequality of opportunities” in order to use the results obtained for theoretical modeling of the essence of the concept of “digital inequality”, which will allow introducing the concepts of “digital resource curse” and “digital international division of labor”. The article is based on the hypothesis of the absolutization of the phenomenon of transnationalization under the influence of digital transformation. It is argued that established approaches to the stratification of countries in the world economic hierarchy according to their absolute and comparative advantages have lost their relevance. The digital space of cooperation changes the structure of participants, where the “country” will act not so much as an actor, but rather as a provider of a universal resource to large technology companies, which, using their ability to transform digital platforms into digital ecosystems and transform digital platforms into digital markets, will act as new managers of information rent, global in their status, in conditions of hyper-competition. The concept of “data colonialism” consolidates the entire process of extraction, collection and appropriation of data by large digital platforms in order to make a profit, while using the strategy of economies of scale as a fundamental competitive advantage. Platform transactions further contribute to the expansion of the market power of platforms both in the domestic market and on a global scale. In this 21st century version of “data colonialism,” big tech companies benefit from global digital colonization, giving rise to the outdated division of countries into “rich North” and “poor South” and introducing the category of “digital resource curse.”
The concepts of “complete digital market” and “incomplete digital market” are introduced. Digital data allows us to talk about the emergence of a new form of capital-digital capital-as a multilevel phenomenon, which allowed us to identify five forms of its manifestation.
The peculiarity of the digital resource curse lies in the inability of the information carrier to control information as a source of potential information rent. Accordingly, the process of transforming information rent into intellectual rent is blocked, when knowledge becomes a special form of resource that allows, when used correctly, to generate excess profits obtained from the use of reproducible, non-exploitation of natural resources, intellectual factors of production, primarily intellectual capital. By analogy with the stage of industrial transformations, production that can use the effect of scale is always more productive compared to those to which this advantage is not available. Digitalization brings this principle of economic cooperation to extreme manifestations: companies in countries with incomplete digital markets are at a disadvantage compared to companies in countries with complete digital markets due to the factor of internal limitations in terms of (in)efficiency of data scaling.