Manos Perdikakis

Hello!

I am a PhD Candidate in Economics at the University of Oxford.

I work on Microeconomic Theory and Industrial Organization, with particular interests in firms' incentives to collect consumer data and invest in data protection.

I am on the 2024-2025 Job Market. Below is a list of my research papers.

In the previous academic year, I visited the Economics Department at Toulouse School of Economics. Earlier in my PhD, I interned in the Chief Economist Team of the European Commission's DG COMP.

You can find my CV here .

You can reach out to me at manosperdikakis(at)gmail.com or at manos.perdikakis(at)economics.ox.ac.uk .

Reputation and the Provision of Data Security (Job Market Paper)

Presented at: Paris Conference in Digital Economics (2024), Oligo Workshop (2024), CRESSE (2024), EEA Conference (2024) , EARIE (2024)

Abstract:

I study a digital platform’s reputational incentives to invest in data security and examine what policies can raise consumer surplus, using a model that features learning about the probability of a data breach. Policies that affect equilibrium investment trade off the direct benefit of higher security against the potential cost of reduced learning about data-breach risk. When the latter effect dominates, policies that raise investment (e.g. penalties) can decrease total consumer welfare. Furthermore, I find that a planner can raise total consumer welfare by imposing ex-ante limits on data collection based on a firm’s history of data breaches. I show this for two different data-collection regimes: if the firm chooses the level of data collection in every period, the planner optimally limits data collection, regardless of whether the firm previously suffered a breach or not. If, instead, consumers choose how much data to share, the planner may find it optimal to limit data sharing only with a firm that previously suffered a data breach.

2. Disclosure and Prevention of Data Breaches

Presented at: Network of Industrial Economists, Leicester (2023), TSE Postal Services and Digital Economics Conference (2024), TSE IO Workshop (2024)

Abstract: I present a principal-agent model with a single firm and a regulator to analyse the tension between incentivizing ex-ante avoidance of negative outcomes and ex-post prompt disclosure of those outcomes, with a specific focus on the regulation of data breaches. The firm does not fully internalize the potential harm to consumers from suffering a data breach, neither the benefits from disclosing one that happens. Hence, it may both invest too little in cyber security and choose inefficiently late disclosure times when breaches do occur. Higher penalties for voluntary disclosure of breaches increase firm investments in cyber security, and breaches happen less frequently. However, this happens at the cost of delayed disclosure for breaches that do occur. I allow for penalties for voluntary and involuntary disclosure to depend on the delay with which data breaches are disclosed in a setting where firms receive private signals about the severity of the breach they face. Under a two-point signal support, I find the family of contracts that solves the principal's screening problem. I identify factors that decrease the disclosure cost of ex-ante incentive provision and thus increase the principal's willingness to provide investment incentives.

3. The Market for Ransomware Insurance

4. Move Fast and Break Things, with Oleh Stupak and Greg Taylor