AØKK08321U Seminar: Economics of Privacy IS CANCELED

Volume 2014/2015
Education
M.Sc, of Economics
(Only available for Master students at Department of Economics)
Content

This seminar deals with the small but growing field of the “Economics of Privacy”. This area of economics uses the “economics toolkit” to analyze how privacy (regulations) affect economic behavior, efficiency, welfare and the distribution of welfare.

Students are expected to find on their own a research question related to privacy. Then they will write a short paper on their question using the tools of economics they have learned during the Bachelor and in other Master courses (e.g. modeling as a game or contracting situation, empirical analysis etc.).

Learning Outcome

Topics: Research questions could, for example, be related to the following topics:

  • Agency problems in data holding/gathering entities
  • Impact of pay-with-your-private-data business models on products/services and consumer welfare
  • Customer databases and pricing
  • Privacy and consumer behavior (possibly using tools from behavioral economics)
  • Privacy and network effects
  • Externalities and strategic complementarity in information revelation (e.g. If everyone else publishes embarrassing photos, I can do so as well)
  • Value and valuation of privacy: The case of...
  • Privacy regulation and innovation
  • Privacy and empirical research: Challenges of rich data sets

Some papers to get an idea of the field:

  • Posner “The Economics of Privacy”, American Economic Review, 1981, vol 71, pp 405-409
  • Taylor “Consumer privacy and the market for customer information”, RAND, 2004, vol 35, pp 631-650
  • Daughety and Reinganum “Public Goods, Social Pressure and the Choice between Privacy and Publicity”, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2010, vol 2, pp 191-221
  • Taylor and Wagman “Consumer privacy in oligopolisitc markets: Winners, losers and welfare”, International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2014, vol 34, pp 80-84
  • Pai and Roth “Privacy and Mechanism Design”, ACM SIGecon Exchanges, 2013, vol 12, pp. 8-29
  • Alessandro Acquisti (basically all his papers)
B.Sc. of Economics and active knowledge of Micro A-C (at least one advanced Master course related to your specific topic is very much recommended)
Planning meeting ind the begining of the semester,informed by the teacher, writing seminar paper during the semester and presentations at the end of the semester. More informations will be uploaded at Absalon by the teacher.

After an introductory meeting at the start of the semester, students will work on their projects. All projects will be presented and discussed during a two day session in the second half of the semester (you have to present your paper and discuss the paper of one other student). A draft version of your paper has to be handed in one week before the presentation. The deadline for handing in the final version is three weeks after the presentation.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Exam
  • 0,3
  • Seminar
  • 0
  • Total
  • 0,3
Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment
Oral examination, 20 min under invigilation
A written seminar paper and a oral presentation for the others participans at the seminar.
Exam registration requirements
Attendance on the seminar. The mandatory commitment paper and seminar paper have been handed in at deadline.
Aid

Al aids for the written seminarpaper.

For the oral presentation the slices for the presentation. The teather can specifiy what els is allowed.

Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
External censorship
up to 20 % censorship at the seminarpaper
Exam period
Is decided and informed by the teacher at the compulsive planningmeeting.
Re-exam
As ordinary.
Criteria for exam assesment

The student must in a satisfactory way demonstrate that he/she has mastered the learning outcome of the course.