Data Brokers Co-Opetition

32 Pages Posted: 28 Feb 2019

See all articles by Yiquan Gu

Yiquan Gu

Henley Business School

Leonardo Madio

University of Padua - Department of Economics and Management; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Carlo Reggiani

The University of Manchester

Date Written: 2019

Abstract

Data brokers share consumer data with rivals and, at the same time, compete with them for selling. We propose a “co-opetition” game of data brokers and characterise their optimal strategies. When data are “sub-additive” with the merged value net of the merging cost being lower than the sum of the values of individual datasets, data brokers are more likely to share their data and sell them jointly. When data are “super-additive”, with the merged value being greater than the sum of the individual datasets, competition emerges more often. Finally, data sharing is more likely when data brokers are more efficient at merging datasets than data buyers.

Keywords: data brokers, personal information, privacy, co-opetition

JEL Classification: D430, L130, L860, M310

Suggested Citation

Gu, Yiquan and Madio, Leonardo and Reggiani, Carlo, Data Brokers Co-Opetition (2019). CESifo Working Paper No. 7523, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3343854 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3343854

Yiquan Gu (Contact Author)

Henley Business School ( email )

University of Reading
Whiteknights
Reading, Berkshire RG6 6UD
United Kingdom

Leonardo Madio

University of Padua - Department of Economics and Management ( email )

Via del Santo, 33
Padova, 35123
Italy

HOME PAGE: http://www.leonardomadio.eu

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) ( email )

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

Carlo Reggiani

The University of Manchester ( email )

Oxford Road
Manchester, N/A M13 9PL
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://https://sites.google.com/view/carloreggianieconomics/home

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
146
Abstract Views
732
Rank
360,704
PlumX Metrics