We shed light on a money-for-privacy trade-off in the market for smartphone applications ("apps"). Developers offer their apps cheaper in return for greater access to personal information, and consumers choose between lower prices and more privacy. We provide evidence for this pattern using data...

One of the most vexing problems in privacy policy is identifying consumer harm from unwanted observation; because it is highly subjective and is likely to vary greatly throughout the population, it doesn't lend itself to easy measurement. Yet, these types of situations increasingly are the focal...

We present a model of a market failure based on a requirement provision by digital platforms in the acquisition of personal information from users of other products/services. We establish the economic harm from the market failure and the requirement using traditional antitrust methodology....

Decentralized blockchain-based transactions benefit users through their openness, transparency, and immutability, which may come at the expense of privacy concerns. This paper shows that if there is a dilemma between decentralization and privacy protection, such that a more decentralized system...

The digitalisation of the economy with data as the new critical resource is a technological revolution which requires an adaptation of the legal framework for markets and the economy. This paper analyzes the privacy concerns in the digital economy from an economics perspective. What can we learn...

A monopolist can use a 'tracking' technology that allows it to identify a consumer's willingness to pay with some probability. Consumers can counteract tracking by acquiring a 'hiding' technology. We show in this note that consumers are collectively better off when this hiding technology is not...

We analyze platform competition where user data is collected to improve ad-targeting. Considering that users incur privacy costs, we show that the equilibrium level of data provision is distorted and can be inefficiently high or low: if overall competition is weak or if targeting benefits are...

Regulatory theorists have engaged in an interesting debate over the merits of “collaborative governance.” The term refers to those governance approaches in which regulators, industry and other stakeholders work together on drafting and enforcing rules. Proponents of collaborative governance...

I examine how firms strategically bundle news reports to offset the negative effects of a privacy breach disclosure. Using a complete dataset of privacy breaches from 2005 to 2014, I find that firms experience a small and significant 0.27% decrease in their stock price on average following the...