Privacy and markets: a love story
This article examines the complex relationship between privacy and markets. In so doing, it rejects both law and economics' skepticism toward privacy and the hostility many privacy law scholars have toward markets. The thesis of this article is that privacy and markets are in important ways sym...
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| Published in: | The Notre Dame law review 2015-12, Vol.91 (2), p.649 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | This article examines the complex relationship between privacy and markets. In so doing, it rejects both law and economics' skepticism toward privacy and the hostility many privacy law scholars have toward markets. The thesis of this article is that privacy and markets are in important ways sympathetic. To paraphrase contract theorist Charles Fried, it is not that privacy will help markets work better, but that the market mechanism quietly assumes and relies upon privacy to work in the first place. And the reverse is true as well. Privacy supports the basic market mechanism by hiding enough distracting, value-laden information from market participants. A certain absence of knowledge focuses us on market-relevant considerations such as quality and price over salient but distorting information such as personal or political commitments. The beauty of the market mechanism is that you do not need to know that the person you are dealing with voted for a politician you hate or doubts we landed on the moon, or for any other basis for distrust or discrimination, only that he is offering the best quality good at the lowest price. |
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| ISSN: | 0745-3515 |