Privacy and the clandestine evolution of e-commerce

This note discusses briefly some questions on economics of privacy, especially the relation of privacy to price discrimination, as well as relevant developments in ecommerce and ordinary commerce. Various open questions that call for further research are discussed. In particular, while much interesting theoretical research has been done, and a small number of informative laboratory experiments have been carried out, much more work would be desirable, especially in some areas of behavioral economics, and there is a great unmet need for active monitoring of the marketplace.