Yassine Lefouili (Toulouse School of Economics) on "Privacy protection and consumer retention" (joint with B. Jullien and M. Riordan

Yassine Lefouili (Toulouse School of Economics) on
Speaker:  Yassine Lefouili - Toulouse School of Economics
  Wednesday, April 4, 2018 at 12:30 PM Polo Santa Marta, Via Cantarane 24, Room 1.59
We study the incentives of a website to sell its customers' personal information. Selling information can result in good, bad or neutral experiences for consumers who learn about their vulnerability to bad matches through experience. The cost to the website of selling information is the risk that a bad experience makes consumers end their relationship with the website. The measures adopted by the website to mitigate that cost are neither contractible nor discernible by consumers. Nevertheless, in equilibrium, the website has incentives to be cautious about selling information or spend resources to screen good matches. We characterize the equilibrium privacy policy of the website and its welfare properties, and discuss the difficulty of welfare-improving regulations.
 

Programme Director
Angelo Zago

External reference
Publication date
September 13, 2017

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