IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/11412.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Design and Price of Information

Author

Listed:
  • Bergemann, Dirk
  • Bonatti, Alessandro
  • Smolin, Alex

Abstract

This paper analyzes the trade of information between a data buyer and a data seller. The data buyer faces a decision problem under uncertainty and seeks to augment his initial private information with supplemental data. The data seller is uncertain about the willingness-to-pay of the data buyer due to this private information. The data seller optimally offers a menu of (Blackwell) experiments as statistical tests to the data buyer. The seller exploits differences in the beliefs of the buyerÂ’s types to reduce information rents while limiting the surplus that must be sacriÂ…ced to provide incentives.

Suggested Citation

  • Bergemann, Dirk & Bonatti, Alessandro & Smolin, Alex, 2016. "The Design and Price of Information," CEPR Discussion Papers 11412, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11412
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP11412
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bergemann, Dirk & Pesendorfer, Martin, 2007. "Information structures in optimal auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 580-609, November.
    2. Anton Kolotilin & Tymofiy Mylovanov & Andriy Zapechelnyuk & Ming Li, 2017. "Persuasion of a Privately Informed Receiver," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85(6), pages 1949-1964, November.
    3. John Riley & Richard Zeckhauser, 1983. "Optimal Selling Strategies: When to Haggle, When to Hold Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(2), pages 267-289.
    4. Fuchs, William & Skrzypacz, Andrzej, 2015. "Government interventions in a dynamic market with adverse selection," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PA), pages 371-406.
    5. Samuelson, William F, 1984. "Bargaining under Asymmetric Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 995-1005, July.
    6. Manelli, Alejandro M. & Vincent, Daniel R., 2006. "Bundling as an optimal selling mechanism for a multiple-good monopolist," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 127(1), pages 1-35, March.
    7. Sarvary, Miklos, 2012. "Gurus and Oracles: The Marketing of Information," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026201694x, December.
    8. Luis Rayo & Ilya Segal, 2010. "Optimal Information Disclosure," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(5), pages 949-987.
    9. Sandro Brusco & Hugo Hopenhayn, 2007. "Deregulation with consensus," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(1), pages 223-250, July.
    10. Krähmer, Daniel & Strausz, Roland, 2015. "Ex post information rents in sequential screening," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 257-273.
    11. Koessler, Frédéric & Skreta, Vasiliki, 2016. "Informed seller with taste heterogeneity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 456-471.
    12. Mussa, Michael & Rosen, Sherwin, 1978. "Monopoly and product quality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 301-317, August.
    13. Jullien, Bruno, 2000. "Participation Constraints in Adverse Selection Models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 1-47, July.
    14. Marco Ottaviani & Andrea Prat, 2001. "The Value of Public Information in Monopoly," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(6), pages 1673-1683, November.
    15. Justin P. Johnson & David P. Myatt, 2006. "On the Simple Economics of Advertising, Marketing, and Product Design," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 756-784, June.
    16. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1977. "Monopoly, Non-linear Pricing and Imperfect Information: The Insurance Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 407-430.
    17. Tymofiy Mylovanov & Thomas Tröger, 2014. "Mechanism Design by an Informed Principal: Private Values with Transferable Utility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(4), pages 1668-1707.
    18. Toikka, Juuso, 2011. "Ironing without control," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(6), pages 2510-2526.
    19. Eric Maskin & John Riley, 1984. "Monopoly with Incomplete Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(2), pages 171-196, Summer.
    20. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    21. Cremer, Jacques & McLean, Richard P, 1988. "Full Extraction of the Surplus in Bayesian and Dominant Strategy Auctions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(6), pages 1247-1257, November.
    22. Admati, Anat R. & Pfleiderer, Paul, 1986. "A monopolistic market for information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 400-438, August.
    23. Levent Celik, 2014. "Information Unraveling Revisited: Disclosure of Horizontal Attributes," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(1), pages 113-136, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dirk Bergemann & Alessandro Bonatti & Alex Smolin, 2014. "Selling Experiments: Menu Pricing of Information," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1952, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    2. Koessler, Frédéric & Skreta, Vasiliki, 2016. "Informed seller with taste heterogeneity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 456-471.
    3. Bonatti, Alessandro & Bergemann, Dirk, 2022. "Data, Competition, and Digital Platforms," CEPR Discussion Papers 17544, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Yamashita, Takuro, 2018. "Optimal Public Information Disclosure by Mechanism Designer," TSE Working Papers 18-936, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    5. Koessler, Frederic & Skreta, Vasiliki, 2019. "Selling with evidence," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(2), May.
    6. Renato Gomes & Alessandro Pavan, 2013. "Cross-Subsidization and Matching Design," Discussion Papers 1559, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    7. Hao Li & Xianwen Shi, 2017. "Discriminatory Information Disclosure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(11), pages 3363-3385, November.
    8. Dirk Bergemann & Alessandro Bonatti, 2015. "Selling Cookies," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 259-294, August.
    9. Dirk Bergemann & Tibor Heumann & Stephen Morris, 2022. "Screening with Persuasion," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2338, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    10. Mark Armstrong, 2016. "Nonlinear Pricing," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 8(1), pages 583-614, October.
    11. Pycia, Marek & Woodward, Kyle, 2021. "Auctions of Homogeneous Goods: A Case for Pay-as-Bid," CEPR Discussion Papers 15656, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Yingkai Li, 2021. "Selling Data to an Agent with Endogenous Information," Papers 2103.05788, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2023.
    13. Chang, Dongkyu, 2021. "Optimal sales mechanism with outside options," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    14. Krähmer, Daniel & Strausz, Roland, 2017. "Sequential versus static screening: An equivalence result," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 317-328.
    15. Maryam Saeedi & Ali Shourideh, 2020. "Optimal Rating Design under Moral Hazard," Papers 2008.09529, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    16. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2019. "Information Design: A Unified Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 57(1), pages 44-95, March.
    17. Bergemann, Dirk & Castro, Francisco & Weintraub, Gabriel Y., 2020. "The scope of sequential screening with ex post participation constraints," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    18. Dirk Bergemann & Karl Schlag, 2012. "Robust Monopoly Pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 13, pages 417-441, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    19. Dirk Bergemann & Alessandro Pavan, 2015. "Introduction to JET Symposium Issue on "Dynamic Contracts and Mechanism Design"," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2016, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    20. Maxim Ivanov, 2021. "Optimal monotone signals in Bayesian persuasion mechanisms," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(3), pages 955-1000, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Selling information; Experiments; Mechanism design; Price discrimination; Product differentiation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11412. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.