引论“隐私”这个概念既难懂又模棱两可,试图阐明其意义的著述已为数不少。我将避开这个定义性问题,而只是简单论及隐私的一个方面,即信息的保有或隐瞒。经济学家对这个方面尤有兴趣,因为对信息的研究已经成为经济学的一个重要领域。迄今为止,信息经济学关注诸如发布广告、欺诈、价格离散(price dispersion)、找工作之类的主题,它们与显性(主要为劳务和生活消费品)市场(explicit market)中的信息传播以及——在更小程度上与——信息隐瞒有关。本文试图对主要在私人语境——而非商业语境——中的信息传播和隐瞒作一个经济分析,这样,本文涉及的主要是窥探、偷听、“自吹自擂”、说闲话这样的事项。私人语境和商业语境之 Introduction The notion of “privacy” is both difficult and ambiguous, and the number of attempts to elucidate its meaning is numerous. I will avoid this defining question, but simply discuss one aspect of privacy, that is, the preservation or invalidity of the information. Economists are particularly interested in this area, as the study of information has become an important area of ​​economics. To date, information economics has focused on topics such as advertising, fraud, price dispersion, job search, and the dissemination of information in explicit (mainly labor and consumer) markets and - To a lesser extent, information hiding. This article attempts to make an economic analysis of the communication and concealment of information mainly in the private context rather than the business context so that the main part of this article is about snooping, eavesdropping, euphemism, gossip . Private Context and Business Context