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Data for Better Lives (hereafter the Report or WDR 2021) presents data as a great 'untapped resource' with transformative potential for developing countries: improving the efficiency, targeting and effectiveness of public services (pp. 54-57); strengthening government transparency and the agency of citizens (p. 58); reducing transaction costs and boosting economic productivity and efficiency (pp. 31, 124); and empowering the private sector to better serve governments and low-income markets (p. 103). In order to achieve these aims, the WDR 2021 argues that data need to become open, more free-flowing and better integrated across organizational and national boundaries. In particular, the authors argue that the small size of many developing economies limits the potential of machine learning and data science and constrains domestic firms from benefiting from digital markets (p. 242). Thus, in order to 'improve lives', data must flow more freely and more safely.The Report identifies a number of barriers standing in the way, including the unwillingness of administrators to share data, leading to under-use and data siloes (pp. 63, 244, 267); a lack of interoperability rules and legal safeguards, leading to market segmentation; misuse of personal data and erosion of trust (pp. 202-09); and a lack of infrastructure and deficiencies in finance and expertise, leading to poor coverage and missed opportunities (pp. 157-77). To overcome these barriers, the Report calls for the establishment of integrated national data systems (pp. 301-21) and the adoption of harmonized standards to support interoperability across institutions and borders (pp. 202-03).At the centre of this vision are private technology firms, envisioned to have the requisite capital and expertise to build necessary infrastructure and create innovative data-intensive products and services. In particular, the Report advocates that global data firms, rather than domestic firms, should play this role arguing that 'firms from larger, more connected economies -or firms that already operate across countries -with access to larger datasets will have an advantage that only grows with time' while 'firms from low-and middle-income countries are more likely to lack both access to finance to cover the initial costs of collecting and managing their data and the analytical capabilities to derive value from them' (p. 111). As such, the Report argues that governments must adopt accommodating policies and refrain from imposing restrictive regulations that might constrain 'international data-driven firms' from operating, writing that such regulations 'depriv[e] the local economy of the pro-growth and development benefits that data-driven firms can provide ' and 'preven[t] the development of a local ecosystem of data-driven entrepreneurs built around these larger firms' (ibid.).The WDR 2021 frames concerns around data discrimination, privacy and control as technical problems that can be solved through regulations, and

Regulating the data market is shaping up to be one of the major challenges of the twenty-first century. In order to think about regulating this market, however, we first need to make its dimensions and dynamics more accessible to research. In this paper we explore what the state of the sociological and legal research on markets can tell us about the market for data: what kind of market it is, the practices and configurations of actors that constitute it, and what kinds of data are traded there. We start from the subjective opacity of this market to researchers interested in regulation, using ‘dark pools’ as a point of reference for the challenges of understanding how data are traded and channelled. We explore comparisons from food and medicine regulation to understand how these markets have been shaped and the different aims that have been taken into account in doing so, and discuss the implications of these explorations for the future regulation of data markets.