There are several aspects of data markets that distinguish them from a typical commodity market: asymmetric information, the non-rivalrous nature of data, and informational externalities. Formally, this gives rise to a new class of games which we call multiple-principal, multiple-agent problem with non-rivalrous goods. Under the assumption that the principal's payoff is quasilinear in the payments given to agents, we show that there is a fundamental degeneracy in the market of non-rivalrous goods. This multiplicity of equilibria also affects common refinements of equilibrium definitions intended to uniquely select an equilibrium: both variational equilibria and normalized equilibria will be non-unique in general. This implies that most existing equilibrium concepts cannot provide predictions on the outcomes of data markets emerging today. The results support the idea that modifications to payment contracts themselves are unlikely to yield a unique equilibrium, and either changes to the models of study or new equilibrium concepts will be required to determine unique equilibria in settings with multiple principals and a non-rivalrous good.
翻译:数据市场有几个方面与典型商品市场有所不同: 不对称的信息、数据的非竞争性质和信息外部性。形式上,这促使出现了一类新的博弈——我们称之为多个委托人、多个代理问题与非竞争性货物。在假设委托人的回报在支付给代理方面呈拟线性的情况下,我们表明,在非竞争性货物的市场上存在基本的退化现象。这种均衡的多样性也影响到通常用于唯一选择均衡的均衡定义的普遍精化: 变分均衡和标准化均衡通常都是不唯一的。这意味着,大多数现有的均衡概念无法提供有关当今出现的数据市场结果的预测。结果支持这样一种想法: 支付合同本身的修改不太可能产生唯一的均衡,因此需要改变研究模型或提出新的均衡概念才能确定具有多个委托人和非竞争性货物的情境中的唯一均衡。