Consumer privacy in oligopolistic markets: Winners, losers, and welfare

Curtis Taylor and Liad Wagman

International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2014, vol. 34, issue C, 80-84

Abstract: Motivated by the unprecedented availability of consumer information on the Internet, we characterize the winners and losers from potential privacy regulation in the context of four commonly-used oligopoly models: a linear city model, a circular city model, a vertical differentiation model, and a multi-unit symmetric demand model. We show that while there are winners and losers as a result of privacy enforcement, the parties who stand to benefit and the parties who stand to lose, as well as whether social welfare is enhanced or diminished, largely depends on the specific economic setting under consideration.

Keywords: Privacy; Competition; Oligopoly; Consumer information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 D8 L13 L15 L5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (49)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016771871400023X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:indorg:v:34:y:2014:i:c:p:80-84

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijindorg.2014.02.010

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Industrial Organization is currently edited by P. Bajari, B. Caillaud and N. Gandal

More articles in International Journal of Industrial Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().