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Main Author: Skënderaj, Arlindo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.14103
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author Skënderaj, Arlindo
author_facet Skënderaj, Arlindo
contents I consider an environment in which a decision maker faces uncertainty and privately holds information in the form of a signal about the true state of the world. The decision maker purchases additional information from a data broker before receiving the signal realization. I characterize the data broker's optimal selling mechanism, which involves screening over all possible signals. I allow the space of all signals the data broker can sell to be arbitrarily correlated with the signal the decision maker owns. This plays a key role in designing the optimal menu. In the binary action setting, the data broker extracts the efficient surplus by offering a distinct binary signal for each type. Moreover, this result holds even when the broker does not know the prior distribution over states. In more general environments, I provide conditions on the payoff structure and the decision maker's type space under which the data broker extracts the efficient surplus. I discuss scenarios in which efficient surplus extraction is not possible.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_14103
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Selling supplemental information
Skënderaj, Arlindo
Theoretical Economics
I consider an environment in which a decision maker faces uncertainty and privately holds information in the form of a signal about the true state of the world. The decision maker purchases additional information from a data broker before receiving the signal realization. I characterize the data broker's optimal selling mechanism, which involves screening over all possible signals. I allow the space of all signals the data broker can sell to be arbitrarily correlated with the signal the decision maker owns. This plays a key role in designing the optimal menu. In the binary action setting, the data broker extracts the efficient surplus by offering a distinct binary signal for each type. Moreover, this result holds even when the broker does not know the prior distribution over states. In more general environments, I provide conditions on the payoff structure and the decision maker's type space under which the data broker extracts the efficient surplus. I discuss scenarios in which efficient surplus extraction is not possible.
title Selling supplemental information
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.14103