The Market for Data Privacy

Ansgar Walther and Antoine Uettwiller
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Tarun Ramadorai

No 13588, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We scrape a comprehensive set of US firms' privacy policies to facilitate research on the supply of data privacy. We analyze these data with the help of expert legal evaluations, and also acquire data on firms' web tracking activities. We find considerable and systematic variation in privacy policies along multiple dimensions including ease of access, length, readability, and quality, both within and between industries. Motivated by a simple theory of big data acquisition and usage, we analyze the relationship between firm size, knowledge capital intensity, and privacy supply. We find that large firms with intermediate data intensity have longer, legally watertight policies, but are more likely to share user data with third parties.

Keywords: Privacy; Data markets; Web tracking; Third-party sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D8 K2 L1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-big, nep-com, nep-ict, nep-law and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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