Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/256768 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
Discussion Paper No. 301
Publisher: 
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München und Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 - Rationality and Competition, München und Berlin
Abstract: 
We introduce consumers with intrinsic privacy preferences into the monopolistic non-linear pricing model. Next to classical consumers, there is a share of data-sensitive consumers who incur a privacy cost if their purchase reveals information to the monopolist. The monopolist discriminates between privacy types using privacy mechanisms which consist of a direct mechanism and a privacy option, targeting, respectively, classical and data-sensitive consumers. We show that a privacy mechanism is optimal if privacy costs are large and that it yields classical consumers a higher utility than data-sensitive consumers with the same valuation. If, by contrast, privacy preferences are public information, data-sensitive consumers with a low valuation obtain a strictly higher utility than classical consumers. With public privacy preferences, data-sensitive consumers and the monopolist are better off, whereas classical consumers are worse off. Our results are relevant for policy measures that target the data-awareness of consumers, such as the European GDPR.
Subjects: 
Optimal non-linear pricing
privacy
monopolistic screening
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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