The Ownership of Data

Journal of Law, Economics and Organization

49 Pages Posted: 17 Jul 2019 Last revised: 19 Dec 2022

See all articles by Anastasios Dosis

Anastasios Dosis

ESSEC Business School; CY Cergy Paris Université

Wilfried Sand-Zantman

University of Toulouse Capitole

Date Written: July 16, 2019

Abstract

We study the effects of property rights over the use of data on market outcomes. For this, we consider a model in which a monopolistic firm offers a service to a set of heterogeneous users. Usage generates valuable data but data extraction entails a privacy cost to users. We show that both the firm and users prefer the users (the firm) to own the rights for low (high) values of data. We further discuss the robustness of our results by allowing more contracting possibilities to the data owner. We show that the main trade-off between the two ownership regimes is robust to these extensions.

Keywords: Ownership, Data, Imperfect Competition, Privacy

JEL Classification: D82, D83, D86, L12, L19, L49

Suggested Citation

Dosis, Anastasios and Sand-Zantman, Wilfried, The Ownership of Data (July 16, 2019). Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3420680 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3420680

Anastasios Dosis (Contact Author)

ESSEC Business School

3 Avenue Bernard Hirsch
B.P 50105
Cergy - Pontoise Cedex, NA 95021
France

CY Cergy Paris Université ( email )

paris
France

Wilfried Sand-Zantman

University of Toulouse Capitole ( email )

France

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