Recently, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) released its official funding approval notices. The project "Market Theory for Data Trading", led by Professor Yifan Dou from the Department of Information Management and Business Intelligence, School of Management at Fudan University, has been successfully approved under the Original Exploration Program. This marks the School's first successful award under this highly selective funding category.

The Original Exploration Program was established by the NSFC in 2020 in response to the Opinions of the State Council on Strengthening Basic Scientific Research, with the aim of substantially enhancing original innovation capacity. The program encourages researchers to propose fundamentally original academic ideas and to pursue exploratory, high-risk basic research. Its objective is to cultivate or generate pioneering outcomes "from zero to one," address fundamental scientific challenges, open up new research directions, and advance the high-quality development of basic research in China.

Professor Dou noted that with the rapid growth of the digital economy and financial technology, data circulation has become increasingly frequent and has emerged as a key driver of China's digital transformation. Major national policy documents have identified data as a critical factor of production and emphasized the improvement of factor market institutions, the smooth flow of production factors, and the development of a unified national data market. Against this backdrop, a series of research directions with Chinese characteristics--such as the structural separation of data property rights, authorized operation of public data, and integrated data markets--have gradually taken shape. Addressing these topics requires the deep integration of economics, management science, and information science, as well as breakthroughs beyond existing theoretical boundaries, in order to establish foundational theories and governance frameworks for data market transactions.

According to the project team, the study focuses on mechanism design and governance methods in data markets, positioning data market theory as its core research direction. From a macro-level perspective, the project systematically investigates the formation and evolution mechanisms of data markets and their underlying complexity. It analyzes factors influencing the emergence of data markets and the efficiency of data allocation, examines new structural characteristics of data markets as well as the conditions under which integrated, multi-layered data markets emerge, and designs contractual mechanisms and infrastructure architectures aligned with the intrinsic features of data.

"This project aims to provide actionable theoretical foundations for China's data factor market from an interdisciplinary perspective combining economics and management," Professor Dou explained. On the one hand, the research team will conduct intensive and systematic theoretical work to support national policymaking and institutional exploration related to the 'three-rights separation' of data. On the other hand, the team will actively engage with real-world practices, using concrete application scenarios to explore pathways for data resourceization and productization, and to unlock the value of dormant data assets.

Rejecting rigid adherence to textbook answers and remaining deeply rooted in Chinese practice while responding to major national development needs has long been a defining feature of the School's research philosophy. The School of Management at Fudan University consistently encourages and supports original research grounded in real-world problems, and actively promotes faculty engagement with critical national development issues.

"To conduct truly original research, scholars must immerse themselves in frontline practice," Professor Dou emphasized. In the emerging field of data factors, the School has gradually built a stable and growing research team, with faculty members and doctoral students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds joining the effort. Throughout this process, the team has maintained sustained and in-depth dialogue with industry practitioners. It is through such continuous interaction and intellectual exchange that genuine originality can take root and flourish.