Document Type
Discussion Paper
Publication Date
9-1-2019
CFDP Number
2203R
CFDP Revision Date
March 1, 2020
CFDP Pages
63
Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) Code(s)
D44, D82, D83.
Abstract
A data intermediary pays consumers for information about their preferences and sells the information so acquired to firms that use it to tailor their products and prices. The social dimension of the individual data - whereby an individual’s data are predictive of the behavior of others - generates a data externality that reduces the intermediary’s cost of acquiring information. We derive the intermediary’s optimal data policy and show that it preserves the privacy of the consumers’ identities while providing precise information about market demand to the firms. This enables the intermediary to capture the entire value of information as the number of consumers grows large.
Recommended Citation
Bergemann, Dirk; Bonatti, Alessandro; and Gan, Tan, "The Economics of Social Data" (2019). Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers. 46.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/cowles-discussion-paper-series/46