Heinz School - CMU
Home
Research
My research interests lie at the overlap of information technology, society, and economics. They include, primarily, the economics of privacy and the behavioral economics of privacy and information security, but also the economics of computers and AI, agents economics, computational economics, ecommerce, cryptography, anonymity, and electronic voting.
I am maintaining a page with resources on the economics of privacy. I am interested in the economic impact of privacy protection and privacy intrusions, the relations between privacy and economic rationality, and the dichotomy between expressed privacy attitudes and actual revealed behavior.
I am also interested in the many ways the interaction and interconnection of human and artificial agents affect highly networked information economies, producing an hybrid form of capital that I call intelligent capital.
I am also interested in voter-verifiable electronic schemes for receipt-free, universally verifiable elections with write-in ballots.
Below, some current and past papers are listed (almost) by area.
A list by publication type is included in my CV.
Alessandro Acquisti. The Economics of Privacy.
Alessandro Acquisti. Privacy, Economics, and Immediate Gratification: Why Protecting Privacy is Easy, but Selling it Is Not.
Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross. Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks and the Facebook
Digital Privacy: Theory, Technologies and Practices. Alessandro Acquisti, Sabrina De Capitani di Vimercati, Stefanos Gritzalis, Costas Lambrinoudakis (eds). Auerbach Publications (Taylor and Francis Group), 2007.
Economics of Privacy and Information Security
Work in progress
[here]
2009
"Predicting Social Security Numbers from Public Data," Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, forthcoming 2009.
"Behavioral Research and Empirical Modeling of Marketing Channels: Implications for both Fields and a Call for Future Research," Robert J. Meyer, Joachim Vosgerau, Vishal Singh, Joel E. Urbany, Gal Zauberman, Michael I. Norton, Tony H. Cui, Brian T. Ratchford, Alessandro Acquisti, David R. Bell, Barbara E. Kahn. Marketing Letters, forthcoming 2009.
"Teaching Johnny not to Fall for Phish," Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Steve Sheng, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Cranor, and Jason Hong. Conditionally accepted, ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, 2009.
"The Effect of Online Privacy Information on Purchasing Behavior: An Experimental Study," Janice Tsai, Serge Egelman, Lorrie Cranor, and Alessandro Acquisti. Conditionally accepted, Information Systems Research, 2009.
"Timing Is Everything? The Effects of Timing and Placement of Online Privacy Indicators," Serge Egelman, Janice Tsai, Lorrie Cranor, and Alessandro Acquisti. CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2009.
"School
of Phish: A Real-world Evaluation of Anti-Phishing Training," Ponnurangam Kumaraguru,
Justin Cranshaw, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Cranor, Jason Hong, Mary Ann Blair, Theodore
Pham. Proceedings
of the 2009 Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), 2009.
2008
"Identity Management, Privacy, and Price Discrimination," Alessandro Acquisti, IEEE Security and Privacy, 6(2), 46-50, 2008.
"Countermeasures against Government-Scale Monetary Forgery", Alessandro Acquisti, Nicolas Christin, Bryan Parno, and Adrian Perrig, (Short paper), Proceedings of Financial Cryptography Conference (FC), Springer, 2008. Forthcoming.
"Anti-Phishing Education," Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Steve Sheng, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Cranor, and Jason Hong. Proceedings of The International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace (ICELW), 2008. Forthcoming.
"Lessons From a Real World Evaluation of Anti-Phishing Training," Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Steve Sheng, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Cranor, and Jason Hong. Proceedings of the eCrime Researchers Summit (eCRS), ACM, 2008. Forthcoming.
"Do Data Breach Disclosure Laws Reduce Identity Theft?," Sasha Romanosky, Rahul Telang, and Alessandro Acquisti.Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS), 2008.
2007
“What Can Behavioral Economics Teach Us About Privacy?” Alessandro Acquisti and Jens Grossklags. In Alessandro Acquisti, Sabrina De Capitani di Vimercati, Stefanos Gritzalis, Costas Lambrinoudakis (eds), Digital Privacy: Theory, Technologies and Practices, Auerbach Publications (Taylor and Francis Group), 363-377, 2007.
"The Effect of Online Privacy Information on Purchasing Behavior: An Experimental Study," Janice Tsai, Serge Egelman, Lorrie Cranor, and Alessandro Acquisti. Proceedings of the International Conference of Information Systems (ICIS), 2007. [21% acceptance rate]
“Protecting People from Phishing: The Design and Evaluation of an Embedded Training Email System,” Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Yong Rhee, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Jason Hong, and Elizabeth Nunge. Proceedings of the Computer-Human Interaction Conference (CHI), CHI Letters 9(1), 905-914, 2007. [25% acceptance rate]
"Anti-Phishing Phil: The Design and Evaluation of a Game That Teaches People Not to Fall for Phish," Steve Sheng, Bryant Magnien, Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Cranor, Jason Hong, and Elizabeth Nunge. Proceedings of the 2007 Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), ACM, 88-99, 2007. [32% acceptance rate]
"Getting Users to Pay Attention to Anti-Phishing Education: Evaluation of Retention and Transfer," Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Yong Rhee, Steve Sheng, S. Hasan, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Cranor and Jason Hong. Proceedings of the 2nd Annual eCrime Researchers Summit, October 4-5, 2007, ACM, 0-81. [37% acceptance rate]
"When 25 Cents is Enough: Willigness to Pay and Willingess to Accept for Personal Information," Alessandro Acqusti and Jens Grossklags. Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS), 2007. [41% acceptance rate]
Digital Privacy: Theory, Technologies and Practices. Alessandro Acquisti, Sabrina De Capitani di Vimercati, Stefanos Gritzalis, Costas Lambrinoudakis (eds). Auerbach Publications (Taylor and Francis Group), 2007.
2006
“Is There a Cost to Privacy Breaches? An Event Study,” Alessandro Acquisti, Allan Friedman, and Rahul Telang. Proceedings of the International Conference of Information Systems (ICIS), 2006. [10% acceptance rate in the Security track]
“Power Strips, Prophylactics, and Privacy, Oh My!,” Julia Gideon, Serge Egelman, Lorrie Cranor, and Alessandro Acquisti. Proceedings of the Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), ACM, 133-144, 2006. [36% acceptance rate]
“Imagined Communities: Awareness, Information Sharing, and Privacy on the Facebook,” Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross. Proceedings of Privacy Enhancing Technologies Workshop (PET), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4258, Springer, 36-58, 2006. [26% acceptance rate]
“Trust Modelling for Online Transactions: A phishing scenario,” Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Alessandro Acquisti, and Lorrie Faith Cranor. Proceedings of Privacy Security Trust Conference (PST), 2006. [30% acceptance rate]
“Privacy Patterns for Online Interactions,” Sasha Romanosky, Alessandro Acquisti, Jason Hong, Lorrie Cranor, and Batya Friedman. Proceedings of Pattern Languages of Programs Conference (PLOP), 2006.
“Studying the Impact of Privacy Information on Online Purchase Decisions,” Serge Egelman, Janice Tsai, Lorrie Cranor, and Alessandro Acquisti. Workshop on Privacy and HCI: Methodologies for Studying Privacy Issues, at the Computer-Human Interaction Conference (CHI), 2006.
“Financial privacy for free? US consumers’ response to FACTA,” Alessandro Acquisti and Bin Zhang. Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS), 2006. [53% acceptance rate]
"Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Privacy," Alessandro Acquisti and Jens Grossklags. Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS), Harvard University, 2005.
2005
"Conditioning Prices on Purchase History," Alessandro Acquisti and Hal Varian. Marketing Science, 24(3), 1-15, 2005.
"Privacy and Rationality in Decision Making," Alessandro Acquisti and Jens Grossklags. IEEE Security and Privacy, 3(1), 26-33, 2005.
"Privacy," Alessandro Acquisti. Rivista di Politica Economica, V/VI, 319-368, 2005.
"Note sull'Economia della Privacy," Alessandro Acquisti. In V. Cuffaro, R. D’Orazio, V. Ricciuto (eds), Il Codice del Trattamento dei Dati Personali, Giappichelli, 907-920, 2007.
"Ubiquitous Computing, Customer Tracking, and Price Discrimination," Alessandro Acquisti. In G. Roussos (ed), Ubiquitous Commerce, Springer-Verlag, 115-132, 2005.
"Privacy and Rationality: A Survey," Alessandro Acquisti and Jens Grossklags. In K. Strandburg and D. Raicu (eds), Privacy and Technologies of Identity: A Cross -Disciplinary Conversation, Springer-Verlag, 15-29, 2005.
"Information Revelation and Privacy in Online Social Networks," Ralph Gross and Alessandro Acquisti. Proceedings of the 2005 Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES), ACM, 71-80, 2005. [23% acceptance rate for long papers]
2004
"Privacy and Security of Personal Information: Technological Solutions and Economic Incentives," Alessandro Acquisti. In J. Camp and R. Lewis (eds), The Economics of Information Security, Kluwer, 165-178, 2004.
"Losses, Gains, and Hyperbolic Discounting: Privacy Attitudes and Privacy Behavior," Alessandro Acquisti and Jens Grossklags. In J. Camp and R. Lewis (eds), The Economics of Information Security, Kluwer, 179-186, 2004.
"Privacy in Electronic Commerce and the Economics of Immediate Gratification," Alessandro Acquisti. Proceedings of the ACM Electronic Commerce Conference (ACM EC), ACM, 21-29, 2004. (Winner of the 2005 PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies.) [16% acceptance rate]
"Privacy, Economics, and Immediate Gratification: Why Protecting Privacy is Easy, but Selling it Is Not," Alessandro Acquisti. Proceedings of the 2004 BlackHat US Conference. Las Vegas, 2004. (Abstract refereed and presentation proceedings.)
2003
"On the Economics of Anonymity," Alessandro Acquisti, Roger Dingledine, and Paul Syverson. Proceedings of the Financial Cryptography Conference (FC), Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2742, Springer-Verlag, 84-102, 2003. (Nominated for the 2003 PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies.) [26% acceptance rate]
"Balance of Power on eBay: Peers or Unequals?," Ben Gross and Alessandro Acquisti. First Workshop on the Economics of P2P Networks, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, 2003.
"Losses, Gains, and Hyperbolic Discounting: An Experimental Approach to Personal Information Security Attitudes and Behavior," Alessandro Acquisti and Jens Grossklags. Workshop on Economics and Information Security (WEIS), University of Maryland, 2003.
2002
"Protecting Privacy with Economics: Economic Incentives for Preventive Technologies in Ubiquitous Computing Environments," Alessandro Acquisti. Workshop on Socially-informed Design of Privacy-enhancing Solutions at the International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UBICOMP). Goteborg, Sweden, 2002. (Invited paper.)
"Security of Personal Information and Privacy: Technological Solutions and Economic Incentives," Alessandro Acquisti. First Workshop on Economics and Information Security (WEIS), UC Berkeley, 2002.
"Computers and Innovation in a Network Economy - An nk landscapes approach," Alessandro Acquisti, draft. CMU, 2003.
"Intelligent Capital: Computers as Nodes in the Network Economy," Alessandro Acquisti, draft. CMU, 2003.
"Von Neumann's Legacy: 'Intelligent' Capital in a Weightless Economy," Alessandro Acquisti. Trinity Economic Papers, 18/98, 1998.
"'Intelligent' vs. Human Capital in the Endogenous/Exogenous Growth Debate," Alessandro Acquisti and Mario Baldassarri. Trinity Economic Papers, 19/98, 1998.
"Intelligenza Artificiale e Crescita Economica: Il Capitale Intelligente ed Autoriproducente da von Neumann alla Crescita Endogena," [Artificial Intelligence and Economic Growth: Intelligent Capital and Self-reproduction from von Neumann to Endogenous Growth Theory], Alessandro Acquisti. Tesi di Laurea in Economia e Commercio, University of Rome La Sapienza, 1997.
"Balance of Power on eBay: Peers or Unequals?," Ben Gross and Alessandro Acquisti. In First Workshop on the Economics of P2P Networks. UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, June 2003.
"Inducing Customers to Try New Goods," Alessandro Acquisti. In Workshop on Information Systems and Economics (WISE 03). Seattle, WA, December 2003.
"Tacit Collusion, Competition and Winner-take-all in E-commerce," Alessandro Acquisti and Bernardo Huberman. UC Berkeley and Xerox PARC, 2001.
"Receipt-free Homomorphic Elections and Write-in Ballots," Alessandro Acquisti. Technical Report 2004/105, International Association for Cryptologic Research, May 2, 2004.
"Anonymous Credentials through Acid Mixing," Alessandro Acquisti, draft. CMU, 2003.
"An User-centric MIX-net Protocol to Protect Privacy," Alessandro Acquisti. In Workshop on Privacy in Digital Environments: Empowering Users, ACM 2002 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 02). New Orleans, LA, November 2002.
"Job Creation and Job Destruction in the Russian Federation," Alessandro Acquisti and Hartmut Lehmann. Revised and resubmitted. Also available as Trinity Economic Papers, 1/00, 2000.
"Grime and Punishment: Job Insecurity and Wage Arrears in the Russian Federation," Hartmut Lehmann, Jonathan Wadsworth and Alessandro Acquisti. Journal of Comparative Economics, 27, 595-617, 1999.
"Teamwork-Centered Autonomy for Extended Human-Agent Interaction in Space Applications," Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Alessandro Acquisti, et al. In 2004 AAAI Spring Symposia - Interaction between Humans and Autonomous Systems over Extended Operation. Stanford University, Stanford, CA: AAAI Press, 2004.
"Adjustable Autonomy and Human-Agent Teamwork in Practice: An Interim Report on Space Applications," J. M. Bradshaw, M. Sierhuis, A. Acquisti, P. Feltovich, R. Hoffman, R. Jeffers, D. Prescott, N. Suri, A. Uszok, and R. van Hoof. In H. Hexmoor, C. Castelfranchi, and R. Falcone (eds), Agent Autonomy. Kluwer, 243-280, 2003.
"Human-Agent Teamwork and Adjustable Autonomy in Practice," Maarten Sierhuis, Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Alessandro Acquisti, Ron van Hoof, Renia Jeffers, and Andrzej Uszok. In Seventh International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence (I-Sairas). Nara, Japan, May 2003.
"Living With Agents and Liking It: Addressing the Technical and Social Acceptability of Agent Technology," Jeffrey M. Bradshaw, Maarten Sierhuis, Alessandro Acquisti, Paul Feltovich, Robert Hoffman, Renia Jeffers, Niranjan Suri, Andrzej Uszok, and Ron Van Hoof. 2003 AAAI Spring Symposia - Human Interaction with Autonomous Systems in Complex Environments. Menlo Park, CA: AAAI Press, SS-03-04, 15-23, 2003.
"Representation and Reasoning for DAML-based Policy and Domain Services in KaOS and Nomads," J. M. Bradshaw, A. Uszok, R. Jeffers, N. Suri, P. Hayes, M. Burstein, A. Acquisti, et al. In Proceedings of the Second ACM International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents & Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 03). Melbourne, Australia; New York, NY: ACM Press, 835-842, 2003.
"Multi-agent Plan Execution and Work Practice: Modeling plans and practices onboard the ISS," Maarten Sierhuis, Alessandro Acquisti, and William Clancey. In Proceedings of the Third International NASA Workshop on Planning and Scheduling for Space. Houston, TX, October 2002.
"What We Can Learn About Human-Agent Teamwork From Practice," J. Bradshaw, M. Sierhuis, A. Acquisti, Y. Gawdiak, D. Prescott, R. Jeffers, N. Suri, and R. van Hoof. In Workshop on Teamwork and Coalition Formation, ACM International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (AAMAS 02). Bologna, Italy, August 2002.
"A Work Practice Model of a Day in the Life Onboard the International Space Station," Alessandro Acquisti and Maarten Sierhuis. Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory Conference (CASOS 02). Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, June 2002.
"Agent-based Modeling of Collaboration and Work Practices onboard the International Space Station," Alessandro Acquisti, Maarten Sierhuis , William Clancey, and Jeffrey Bradshaw. In Proceedings of the Eleventh Conference on Computer-Generated Forces and Behavior Representation (CGF 02). Orlando, FL, 181-188, 2002.
"Agent-based Modeling of Collaboration and Work Practices onboard the International Space Station," Alessandro Acquisti, Maarten Sierhuis, William Clancey, and Jeffrey Bradshaw. UCLA Lake Arrowhead Conference on Computational Social Science: Agent-Based Modeling in the Social Sciences, Lake Arrowhead, CA, May 2002.
"Brahms Tutorial," Alessandro Acquisti, William Clancey, Ron van Hoof, Mike Scott and Maarten Sierhuis. Brahms TM01-0002, 167 pages, NASA Ames Research Center, 2001.
"ISS/PSA Brahms Model," Alessandro Acquisti and Maarten Sierhuis. Brahms TM01-0004, NASA Ames Research Center, 2001.