Selling Consumer Data for Profit: Optimal Market-Segmentation Design and Its Consequences

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Yang, Kai Hao
• 署名单位: Yale University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20210616
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 1364-1393
• 关键词: Dynamic mechanism design; price-discrimination; monopoly

摘要

A data broker sells market segmentations to a producer with private cost who sells a product to a unit mass of consumers. This paper characterizes the revenue-maximizing mechanisms for the data broker. Every optimal mechanism induces quasi-perfect price discrimination. All the consumers with values above a cost-dependent cutoff buy by paying their values while the rest of consumers do not buy. The characterization implies that market outcomes remain unchanged even if the data broker becomes more powerful-either by gaining the ability to sell access to consumers or by becoming a retailer who purchases the product and sells to the consumers exclusively.