The Private Impact of Public Data: Landsat Satellite Maps Increased Gold Discoveries and Encouraged Entry
研究了公共数据（Landsat卫星地图）如何影响黄金勘探行业中新老企业的发现率和市场份额，发现公共数据使重大黄金发现率翻倍，并将新企业市场份额从约10%提升至25%。
How does public data shape the relative performance of incumbents and entrants in the private sector? Using a simple theoretical framework, I argue that public data reduces investment uncertainty, facilitates the discovery of new market opportunities, and increases the relative market share of new entrants relative to incumbents. I shed light on these predictions by estimating the impact of public data from Landsat, a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellite mapping program, on the discovery rates of new deposits by incumbents (seniors) and entrants (juniors) in the gold exploration industry. I exploit idiosyncratic timing variation and cloud cover in Landsat coverage across regions to identify the causal effect of public data on the patterns of gold discovery. I find that Landsat data nearly doubled the rate of significant gold discoveries after a region was mapped and increased the market share of new entrants from about 10% to 25%. Public data seem to play an important, yet relatively underexplored, role in driving performance differences across firms. This paper was accepted by Ashish Arora, entrepreneurship and innovation.