The economics of social data

Dirk Bergemann, Alessandro Bonatti and Tan Gan

RAND Journal of Economics, 2022, vol. 53, issue 2, 263-296

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1756-2171.12407

Related works:
Working Paper: The Economics of Social Data (2022)
Working Paper: The Economics of Social Data (2021)
Working Paper: The Economics of Social Data (2021)
Working Paper: The Economics of Social Data (2020)
Working Paper: The Economics of Social Data (2020)
Working Paper: The Economics of Social Data (2020)
Working Paper: The Economics of Social Data (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:randje:v:53:y:2022:i:2:p:263-296

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... al.asp?ref=0741-6261

Access Statistics for this article

RAND Journal of Economics is currently edited by James Hosek

More articles in RAND Journal of Economics from RAND Corporation Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().