We investigate the effects of price discrimination on prices, profits, and consumer surplus when (a) at least one competing firm can use consumers' private information to price discriminate yet (b) consumers can prevent such use by paying a "privacy cost". Unlike a monopolist, competing duopolists do not always benefit from a higher privacy cost because each firm's profit decreases-and consumer surplus increases-with that cost. Under such competition, the optimal strategy for an owner of consumer data is selling to only one firm, thereby maximizing the stakes for rival buyers. The resulting inefficiencies imply that policy makers should devote more attention to discouraging exclusivity deals and less to ensuring that consumers can easily protect their privacy.20 Under indifference, consumers buy from the informed firm (which we are assuming is firm A).

This paper investigates the effects of price discrimination on prices, profits and consumer surplus, when one or more competing firms can use consumers' private information to price discriminate and consumers can pay a privacy cost to avoid it. While a monopolist always benefits from higher privacy costs, this is not true in the competing duopoly case. In this last case, firms' individual profits are decreasing while consumer surplus is increasing in the privacy cost. Finally, under competition, we show that the optimal selling strategy for the owner of consumer data consists in dealing exclusively with one firm in order to create maximal competition between the winner and the loser of data. This brings inefficiencies, and we show that policy makers should concentrate their attention on exclusivity deals rather than making it easier for consumers to protect their privacy.

Some applications of Nash bargaining in the antitrust analysis of reverse payment settlements estimate the bargaining power parameter as the split of the surplus in the actual settlement with alleged reverse payments. This estimated parameter is then used as the bargaining power parameter in the but-for world where reverse payments are prohibited. We demonstrate that this approach is incorrect. Indeed, in the but-for world there could theoretically be an alternative “no payment” settlement where reverse payments are prohibited. However, the prohibition on reverse payments disproportionately affects the shape of the bargaining set in favor of the patent holder. With this asymmetry in the bargaining set, the estimated “bargaining power” in the actual world (with a settlement) no longer accurately reflects the split of the surplus that would have been agreed during the but-for negotiation with no payments. Moreover, we find that keeping the split of the surplus constant between the actual and but-for worlds is not innocuous because it overestimates the extent of alleged generic delay.

This paper studies how product customization and consumer privacy affect a monopolist’s incentives to engage in perfect price discrimination. We consider a monopolist that faces an ex ante choice to commit to price discrimination or to a uniform price. We introduce a simple model in which a monopolist can use analytics to access consumer data to both price-discriminate and offer customized products. In turn, consumers can protect their privacy to avoid price discrimination at a cost. By committing not to price-discriminate, the firm induces consumers to not protect their data, which allows it to customize the product. It can then extract the extra value through an increased uniform price. This strategy is profitable when the value added through customization is sufficiently high. An intermediate quality of analytics gives the monopolist more incentives to set a uniform price.