Selling Consumer Data for Profit: Optimal Market-Segmentation Design and Its Consequences
研究了数据经纪人如何向有私人成本的生产者出售市场细分，以最大化收入，发现最优机制导致准完全价格歧视，高价值消费者按支付意愿购买，其余不买。
A data broker sells market segmentations to a producer with private cost who sells a product to a unit mass of consumers. This paper characterizes the revenue-maximizing mechanisms for the data broker. Every optimal mechanism induces quasi-perfect price discrimination. All the consumers with values above a cost-dependent cutoff buy by paying their values while the rest of consumers do not buy. The characterization implies that market outcomes remain unchanged even if the data broker becomes more powerful—either by gaining the ability to sell access to consumers or by becoming a retailer who purchases the product and sells to the consumers exclusively.