IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v109y2019p397-402.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why the Economics Profession Must Actively Participate in the Privacy Protection Debate

Author

Listed:
  • John M. Abowd
  • Ian M. Schmutte
  • William N. Sexton
  • Lars Vilhuber

Abstract

When Google or the US Census Bureau publishes detailed statistics on browsing habits or neighborhood characteristics, some privacy is lost for everybody while supplying public information. To date, economists have not focused on the privacy loss inherent in data publication. In their stead, these issues have been advanced almost exclusively by computer scientists who are primarily interested in technical problems associated with protecting privacy. Economists should join the discussion, first to determine where to balance privacy protection against data quality—a social choice problem. Furthermore, economists must ensure new privacy models preserve the validity of public data for economic research.

Suggested Citation

  • John M. Abowd & Ian M. Schmutte & William N. Sexton & Lars Vilhuber, 2019. "Why the Economics Profession Must Actively Participate in the Privacy Protection Debate," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 109, pages 397-402, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:109:y:2019:p:397-402
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20191106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20191106
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20191106.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20191106.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. John M. Abowd & Bryce E. Stephens & Lars Vilhuber & Fredrik Andersson & Kevin L. McKinney & Marc Roemer & Simon Woodcock, 2009. "The LEHD Infrastructure Files and the Creation of the Quarterly Workforce Indicators," NBER Chapters, in: Producer Dynamics: New Evidence from Micro Data, pages 149-230, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Gary Benedetto & Jordan C. Stanley & Evan Totty, 2018. "The Creation and Use of the SIPP Synthetic Beta v7.0," CES Technical Notes Series 18-03, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    3. Timothy Dunne & J. Bradford Jensen & Mark J. Roberts, 2009. "Producer Dynamics: New Evidence from Micro Data," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number dunn05-1, October.
    4. John M. Abowd & Ian M. Schmutte, 2019. "An Economic Analysis of Privacy Protection and Statistical Accuracy as Social Choices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(1), pages 171-202, January.
    5. John M. Abowd & Ian M. Schmutte, 2015. "Economic Analysis and Statistical Disclosure Limitation," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 46(1 (Spring), pages 221-293.
    6. Alessandro Acquisti & Leslie K. John & George Loewenstein, 2013. "What Is Privacy Worth?," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(2), pages 249-274.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michler, Jeffrey D. & Josephson, Anna & Kilic, Talip & Murray, Siobhan, 2022. "Privacy protection, measurement error, and the integration of remote sensing and socioeconomic survey data," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    2. Ian M. Schmutte & Nathan Yoder, 2022. "Information Design for Differential Privacy," Papers 2202.05452, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
    3. Vilhuber, Lars, 2023. "Reproducibility and transparency versus privacy and confidentiality: Reflections from a data editor," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 2285-2294.
    4. Milan Frederik Klus & Julia Müller, 2021. "The digital leader: what one needs to master today’s organisational challenges," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 91(8), pages 1189-1223, October.

    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. Jahangir Alam M. & Dostie Benoit & Drechsler Jörg & Vilhuber Lars, 2020. "Applying data synthesis for longitudinal business data across three countries," Statistics in Transition New Series, Statistics Poland, vol. 21(4), pages 212-236, August.
    2. Vilhuber, Lars, 2023. "Reproducibility and transparency versus privacy and confidentiality: Reflections from a data editor," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 2285-2294.
    3. John M. Abowd & Ian M. Schmutte & Lars Vilhuber, 2018. "Disclosure Limitation and Confidentiality Protection in Linked Data," Working Papers 18-07, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    4. Emin Dinlersoz & Henry Hyatt & Hubert Janicki, 2019. "Who Works for Whom? Worker Sorting in a Model of Entrepreneurship with Heterogeneous Labor Markets," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 34, pages 244-266, October.
    5. Fredrik Andersson & John C. Haltiwanger & Mark J. Kutzbach & Henry O. Pollakowski & Daniel H. Weinberg, 2018. "Job Displacement and the Duration of Joblessness: The Role of Spatial Mismatch," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(2), pages 203-218, May.
    6. Barth, Erling & Davis, James C. & Freeman, Richard B. & McElheran, Kristina, 2023. "Twisting the demand curve: Digitalization and the older workforce," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 233(2), pages 443-467.
    7. Kevin L. McKinney & John M. Abowd & John Sabelhaus, 2021. "United States Earnings Dynamics: Inequality, Mobility, and Volatility," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income and Wealth, pages 69-104, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Lucia Foster, 2020. "Panel Remarks: Measuring Business Innovation Using a Multidimensional Approach," NBER Chapters, in: The Role of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Economic Growth, pages 569-575, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. John R. Graham & Hyunseob Kim & Si Li & Jiaping Qiu, 2019. "Employee Costs of Corporate Bankruptcy," NBER Working Papers 25922, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Joyce K. Hahn & Henry R. Hyatt & Hubert P. Janicki & Stephen R. Tibbets, 2017. "Job-to-Job Flows and Earnings Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 358-363, May.
    11. Matthew R. Graham & Mark J. Kutzbach & Danielle H. Sandler, 2017. "Developing a Residence Candidate File for Use With Employer-Employee Matched Data," Working Papers 17-40, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    12. Christopher Goetz & Henry Hyatt & Erika McEntarfer & Kristin Sandusky, 2016. "The Promise and Potential of Linked Employer-Employee Data for Entrepreneurship Research," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring Entrepreneurial Businesses: Current Knowledge and Challenges, pages 433-462, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Alexander M. Gelber & Damon Jones & Daniel W. Sacks, 2013. "Estimating Earnings Adjustment Frictions: Method and Evidence from the Social Security Earnings Test," NBER Working Papers 19491, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. John M. Abowd & Joelle Abramowitz & Margaret C. Levenstein & Kristin McCue & Dhiren Patki & Trivellore Raghunathan & Ann M. Rodgers & Matthew D. Shapiro & Nada Wasi & Dawn Zinsser, 2021. "Finding Needles in Haystacks: Multiple-Imputation Record Linkage Using Machine Learning," Working Papers 21-35, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    15. Kevin L. McKinney & John M. Abowd, 2022. "Male Earnings Volatility in LEHD Before, During, and After the Great Recession," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(1), pages 33-39, December.
    16. Joel Slemrod, 2024. "What taxpayers, governments and tax economists do – and what they should do," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(1), pages 7-19, March.
    17. John M. Abowd & Kevin L. McKinney, 2014. "Noise Infusion As A Confidentiality Protection Measure For Graph-Based Statistics," Working Papers 14-30, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    18. Nicholas Bloom & Scott Ohlmacher & Cristina Tello-Trillo & Melanie Wallskog, 2021. "Pay, Productivity and Management," Working Papers 21-31, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    19. Shigeru Fujita & Giuseppe Moscarini, 2017. "Recall and Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(12), pages 3875-3916, December.
    20. Isaac Sorkin, 2018. "Ranking Firms Using Revealed Preference," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(3), pages 1331-1393.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
    • C80 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - General
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

    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:aea:apandp:v:109:y:2019:p:397-402. 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    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.