| Abstract: |
When Google or the U.S. Census Bureau publish detailed statistics on browsing
habits or neighborhood characteristics, some privacy is lost for everybody
while supplying public information. To date, economists have not focused on
the privacy loss inherent in data publication. In their stead, these issues
have been advanced almost exclusively by computer scientists who are primarily
interested in technical problems associated with protecting privacy.
Economists should join the discussion, first, to determine where to balance
privacy protection against data quality; a social choice problem. Furthermore,
economists must ensure new privacy models preserve the validity of public data
for economic research. |