Selling Strategic Information in Digital Competitive Markets
David Bounie,
Antoine Dubus and
Patrick Waelbroeck
No 7078, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo
Abstract:
This paper investigates the strategies of a data broker in selling information to one or to two competing firms that can price-discriminate consumers. The data broker can strategically choose any segment of the consumer demand (information structure) to sell to firms that implement third-degree price-discrimination. We show that the equilibrium profits of the data broker are maximized when (1) information identifies the consumers with the highest willingness to pay; (2) consumers with a low willingness to pay remain unidentified; (3) the data broker sells two symmetrical information structures. The data broker therefore strategically sells partial information on consumers in order to soften competition between firms. Extending the baseline model, we prove that these results hold under first-degree price-discrimination.
Keywords: data broker; information structure; price-discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D40 D43 D80 L50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ind, nep-mic, nep-mkt and nep-pay
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)
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https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp7078.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
Journal Article: Selling strategic information in digital competitive markets (2021) 
Working Paper: Selling Strategic Information in Digital Competitive Markets (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7078
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