Publications

We propose a model of data intermediation to analyze the incentives for sharing individual data in the presence of informational externalities. A data intermediary acquires signals from individual consumers regarding their preferences. The intermediary resells the information in a product market wherein firms and consumers can tailor their choices to the demand data. The social dimension of the individual data - whereby an individual’s data are predictive of the behavior of others - generates a data externality that can reduce the intermediary’s cost of acquiring the information. We derive the intermediary’s optimal data policy and establish that it preserves the privacy of consumer identities while providing precise information about market demand to the firms. This policy enables the intermediary to capture the total value of the information as the number of consumers becomes large.

A data intermediary pays consumers for information about their preferences, and sells the information so-acquired to firms that use it to tailor their product offers and prices. The social dimension of the individual data - whereby an individual’s data is predictive of the behavior of others - generates a data externality that reduces the intermediary’s cost of acquiring information. We derive the data intermediary’s optimal information policy, and show that it preserves privacy over the identity of the consumers, but provides precise information about market demand to the firms.

A data intermediary acquires signals from individual consumers regarding their preferences. The intermediary resells the information in a product market wherein firms and consumers tailor their choices to the demand data. The social dimension of the individual data -whereby a consumer’s data are predictive of others’ behavior- generates a data externality that can reduce the intermediary’s cost of acquiring the information. The intermediary optimally preserves the privacy of consumers’ identities if and only if doing so increases social surplus. This policy enables the intermediary to capture the total value of the information as the number of consumers becomes large.

We specify an equilibrium model of car ownership with private information where individuals sell and purchase new and second-hand cars over their life-cycle. This private information introduces a transaction cost, distorts the market and reduces the value of a car as a savings instrument. We estimate the model using Danish linked registry data on car ownership, income and wealth. The transaction cost, which we term the lemons penalty, is estimated to be 18% of the price in the first year of ownership, declining with the length of ownership. It leads to large reductions in the turnover of cars and in the probability of downgrading in the event of an adverse income shock. The size of the lemons penalty declines when uncertainty in the economy increases, as in recessions: large income shocks induce individuals to sell their cars, even if of good quality, and this reduces the lemons problem.

This working paper extends the methodology of non-smooth affective portfolio theory (APT) for eliciting (IR)rational preferences of investors endowed with continuous quasilinear utility functions, where assets are portfolios of risky and ambiguous state-contingent claims. The elicitation is a solution of the affective Afriat inequalities;see technical appendix 1. Solving the smooth affective Afriat inequalities is Np-hard; see technical appendices 2, 3, and 4. The proposed extension is a methodology for the elicitation of (IR)rational preferences of individuals endowed with random continuous quasilinear utility functions defined over finite subsets of discrete social goods as a refutable model of social exclusion in the incomplete markets for social goods; see technical appendices 5 and 6. The methods of elicitation are generalized estimating equations (GEE) and alternating logistic regression (ALR); see technical appendices; 7 and 8.

Can greater control over earned income incentivize women to work and influence gender norms? In collaboration with Indian government partners, we provided rural women with individual bank accounts and randomly varied whether their wages from a public workfare program were directly deposited into these accounts or into the male household head’s account (the status quo). Women in a random subset of villages were also trained on account use. In the short run, relative to women just offered bank accounts, those who also received direct deposit and training increased their labor supply in the public and private sectors. In the long run, gender norms liberalized: women who received direct deposit and training became more accepting of female work, and their husbands perceived fewer social costs to having a wife who works. These effects were concentrated in households with otherwise lower levels of, and stronger norms against, female work. Women in these households also worked more in the long run and became more empowered. These patterns are consistent with models of household decisionmaking in which increases in bargaining power from greater control over income interact with, and influence, gender norms.