This article argues that benefit-cost analysis ("BCA") is extremely challenging in online child safety and digital privacy debates, yet it remains essential that analysts and policymakers attempt to conduct such reviews. While we will never be able to perfectly determine either the benefits or...

Comments of Adam D. Thierer (Mercatus Center at George Mason University) to the Federal Trade Commission in its proceeding on “the consumer privacy and security issues" associated with the “Internet of Things.” The filing argues that the Internet of Things -- like the Internet itself --...

This article is part of a Wisconsin Law Review symposium in honor of the work of Neil Komesar, and particularly his book “Imperfect Alternatives: Choosing Institutions in Law, Economics, and Public Policy.” I used this as the main text in 2003 for one of the first law school courses on...

I examine how firms strategically bundle news reports to offset the negative effects of a privacy breach disclosure. Using a complete dataset of privacy breaches from 2005 to 2014, I find that firms experience a small and significant 0.27% decrease in their stock price on average following the...

As businesses and other entities have sought to collect more personal data on individuals, the public has pushed back, and lawmakers throughout the United States and elsewhere have responded by passing data protection laws. Recent data protection laws passed by the European Union and by several...

Over fifty years ago, Charles Reich posited that we should extend property protections to what he would call “government largess”: that array of interests—from licenses to welfare benefits—that often form the bases for one’s economic existence in the modern world. Reich considered such...

I examine how firms strategically bundle news reports to offset the negative effects of a privacy breach disclosure. Using a complete dataset of privacy breaches from 2005 to 2014, I find that firms experience a small and significant 0.27% decrease in their stock price on average following the...

We analyze personal data protection laws in the United States through the lenses of the economic theories of ex ante safety regulation, ex post liability and information disclosure. Specifically, we consider and contrast how legal and economic theories interpret privacy costs and the remedies to...

This paper presents a multi-stakeholder approach for developing an appropriate privacy regulation in the age of big data. We develop our argument in five steps, starting (1) with a review of the current academic debate on privacy regulation. We analyze a dysfunctional mutual excludability...

This paper explores the ongoing changes in privacy as a social construction due to the popularization of social network sites like Facebook. From the analysis of the recent changes on Facebook's Privacy Policies, It concludes that what we understand by privacy will evolve as a by product of the...