Salle 3001

Kristoffer NIMARK (Cornell University) “The macroeconomics of surveillance capitalism”

Abstract: This paper studies modern life. You are born, you consume a sequence of goods that may or may not leave you satisfied, and then you die. To pay for the goods, you work in a firm that tries to influence you (and others like you) to buy their product by placing ads that you have no possibility of escaping. Large firms use the predictive power of the data they collect to divert you away from goods that would leave you more satisfied than the ones you actually consume, but leave firms with a smaller profit. Because you are less unique than you think, your preferences are predictable from other consumers’ behavior, leading to too much supply of mainstream products, with too few options to express what little personality you have through your consumption choices. In your spare time, you enjoy diversions that appear to be free, but in fact only help firms to more efficiently divert you to their high margin products. It is unclear whether anything is quantitatively or qualitatively important.

Organizer : Julien PRAT