Amongst major economies, China has been taking a lead in the development of central bank digital currency (CBDC), which has generated widespread interest and impact around the globe. China’s CBDC, commonly known as e-CNY, is designed with several distinctive features, enabling it to compare favorably to other payment methods such as credit cards, mobile payment, unbacked cryptocurrency, and stablecoins. A variety of social, economic, political, and regulatory reasons can be identified to help explain China’s active pursuit of CBDC. However, the prospect of success will be affected by many factors and may vary between the domestic and international markets. This paper argues that the adoption of eCNY will likely succeed domestically, but may face more challenges in the international markets. The development of e-CNY seems to have created a catfish effect on other major economies in the race for CBDC. It is not fully clear, however, that the CBDC race will be better explained by the first-mover or the late-mover advantage theory. The CBDC project will have both public and private law implications, and several legal issues warrant particular attention in relation to the legal status of CBCD, the role and responsibility of the central bank, legal remedies for losses suffered by CBDC users from cybersecurity issues and operational problems, and the issue of data privacy and protection.

We build a two-country general equilibrium model to analyze the effects of cross-border data flows and pre-existing development gaps in data economies on each country's production and international trade. Raw data as byproducts of consumption can be transformed into various types of working data (information) to be used by both domestic and foreign producers. Because data constitute a new production factor for intermediate goods, a large extant divide in data utilization can reduce or even freeze trade. Cross-border data flows mitigate the situation and improve welfare when added to international trade. Data-inefficient countries where data are less important in production enjoy a ``latecomer's advantage'' with international trade and data flows, contributing more raw data from which the data-efficient countries generate knowledge for production. Furthermore, cross-border data flows can reverse the cyclicity of working data usage after productivity shocks, whereas shocks to data privacy or import costs have opposite effects on domestic and foreign data sectors. The insights inform future research and policy discussions concerning data divide, data flows, and their implications for trade liberalization, the data labor market, among others.

We examine the role of borrowers' digital footprints in debt collection. Using a large sample of personal loans from a fintech lender in China, we find that the information acquired by the lender through borrowers' digital footprints can increase the repayment likelihood on delinquent loans by 18.5%. The effect can be explained by two channels: bonding borrowers' obligations with their social networks and locating borrowers' physical locations. Moreover, the lender is more likely to approve loan applications from borrowers with digital footprints, even though these borrowers may occasionally have a higher likelihood of delinquency. The use of digital footprints can remain legitimate under stringent privacy protection regulations and fair debt collection practices. Our findings suggest that digital footprints, as a new type of collateral, can ultimately enhance financial inclusion by facilitating the lender's collection of delinquent loans.

We examine the role of borrowers’ digital footprints in debt collection. Using a large sample of personal loans from a fintech lender in China, we find that the information acquired by the lender through borrowers’ digital footprints can increase the repayment likelihood on delinquent loans by 18.5%. The effect can be explained by two channels: bonding borrowers’ obligations with their social networks and locating borrowers’ physical locations. Moreover, the lender is more likely to approve loan applications from borrowers with digital footprints, even though these borrowers may occasionally have a higher likelihood of delinquency. The use of digital footprints can remain legitimate under stringent privacy protection regulations and fair debt collection practices. Our findings suggest that digital footprints, as a new type of collateral, can ultimately enhance financial inclusion by facilitating the lender’s collection of delinquent loans.

Open banking facilitates data sharing consented by customers who generate the data, with a regulatory goal of promoting competition between traditional banks and challenger fintech entrants. We study lending market competition when sharing banks’ customer data enables better borrower screening or targeting by fintech lenders. Open banking could make the entire financial industry better off yet leave all borrowers worse off, even if borrowers could choose whether to share their data. We highlight the importance of equilibrium credit quality inference from borrowers’ endogenous sign-up decisions. When data sharing triggers privacy concerns by facilitating exploitative targeted loans, the equilibrium sign-up population can grow with the degree of privacy concerns.