The economics of social data

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bergemann, Dirk; Bonatti, Alessandro; Gan, Tan
• 署名单位: Yale University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: RAND JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0741-6261
• DOI: 10.1111/1756-2171.12407
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 263-296
• 关键词: naked exclusion; INFORMATION; privacy; MARKETS

摘要

A data intermediary acquires signals from individual consumers regarding their preferences. The intermediary resells the information in a product market wherein firms and consumers tailor their choices to the demand data. The social dimension of the individual data-whereby a consumer's data are predictive of others' behavior-generates a data externality that can reduce the intermediary's cost of acquiring the information. The intermediary optimally preserves the privacy of consumers' identities if and only if doing so increases social surplus. This policy enables the intermediary to capture the total value of the information as the number of consumers becomes large.