The Economics of Social Data
研究数据中介从消费者处获取偏好信号并转售给产品市场，发现数据的社会维度产生外部性，降低中介获取成本，且中介在能增加社会剩余时才会保护消费者隐私。
Abstract 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.