Earlier this spring, the Law & Economics Center‘s Program on Economics & Privacy (PEP) submitted a comment to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s newly formed Privacy Working Group (PWG) in response to it’s Request for Information (RFI).

In the comment, PEP urges the PWG to consider that personalization—through content and ads—drives the online ecosystem. This means that any legislation limiting the ability to engage in personalization is likely to reduce the revenue available to online creators, leading to lower quality and output of content. Second, the comment encourages the PWG to rely, when possible, on revealed preferences (RP)—actual data based on known choices—rather than stated preferences (SP), such as those derived from surveys or polls. Finally, the comment asks the PWG to consider the extent to which competition over privacy can help address market failures in providing consumers with optimal levels of privacy.

You can view the full comment here.