Non-Competing Data Intermediaries

Abstract：

I study competition among data intermediaries—data brokers and technology companies that collect consumer data and sell them to downstream firms. When firms use consumer data to extract rents, intermediaries have to compensate consumers for personal data. I show that competition among intermediaries fails: If they offer high compensation, consumers share their data with multiple intermediaries, which lowers the price of data in the downstream market and hurts intermediaries. This leads to multiple equilibria with different allocations of data among intermediaries: There is a monopoly equilibrium, and an equilibrium with greater data concentration benefits intermediaries and hurts consumers.

Speaker Biography： 

Shota obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University and currently works at the Bank of Canada as a senior economist. He specializes in Microeconomic theory, especially in Economics of the Internet. He has accomplished great job as an economist: one of his working paper is accepted at Games and Economic Behavior, which is one of the top journals in economic theory. Also, his another paper is in R&R at American Economic Review which is the top journal in economics.