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The Design and Price of Information

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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 buyer�s types to reduce information rents while limiting the surplus that must be sacrificed to provide incentives.

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  • Dirk Bergemann & Alessandro Bonatti & Alex Smolin, 2016. "The Design and Price of Information," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2049, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    • Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2049
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    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

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