Ideas Made to Matter
Blockchain for marketing? Maybe, but privacy issues abound
Blockchain’s permanent record is one of its strengths, but it can cause problems for marketing strategies and consumer privacy.
Mar 20, 2023
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Catherine Tucker
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Catherine Tucker is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and a Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan. She is the faculty director of the EMBA program. She has also been the Chair of the MIT Sloan PhD Program.
Her research interests lie in how technology allows firms to use digital data and machine learning to improve performance, and in the challenges this poses for regulation. Tucker has particular expertise in online advertising, digital health, social media, and electronic privacy. Her research studies the interface between marketing, the economics of technology, and law.
She has received an NSF CAREER Award for her work on digital privacy, the Erin Anderson Award for an Emerging Female Marketing Scholar and Mentor, the Garfield Economic Impact Award for her work on electronic medical records, the Paul E. Green Award for contributions to the practice of Marketing Research, the William F. O'Dell Award for most significant, long-term contribution to Marketing, and the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science Long Term Impact Award for long-run impact on marketing.
She is a cofounder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab which studies the applications of blockchain. She has been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She has testified to Congress regarding her work on digital privacy and algorithms, and presented her research to the OECD, World Bank, IMF and the ECJ.
Tucker is senior editor at Marketing Science. She has been coeditor at Quantitative Marketing and Economics and associate editor at Management Science, Marketing Science, and the Journal of Marketing Research. She is the codirector of the program on Digital Economics and Artificial Intelligence at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
She teaches MIT Sloan's course on Pricing and the EMBA course "Marketing Management for the Senior Executive." She has received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching as well as being voted "Teacher of the Year" at MIT Sloan.
She holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University and a BA from the University of Oxford.
Honors
Tucker wins O’Dell Award
Tucker and Simester win AMA award
Tucker receives long term impact award
Tucker wins TechSIG-Lazaridis Prize
Publications
"Inequality, Privacy, and Digital Market Design."
Tucker, Catherine. In Fair by Design, edited by Alex Teyteboym and Scott Kominers. Forthcoming.
"Digital Hermits."
Miklós-Thal, Jeanine, Avi Goldfarb, Avery Haviv, and Catherine E. Tucker, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6877-23. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, April 2023.
"Content Aggregation by Platforms: The Case of the News Media."
Chiou, Lesley, and Catherine Tucker, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6925-23. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, March 2023.
"What Blockchain Can and Can’t Do: Applications to Marketing and Privacy."
Marthews, Alexander and Catherine Tucker. International Journal of Research in Marketing Vol. 40, No. 1 (2023): 49-53. SSRN.
"Algorithmic Exclusion: The Fragility of Algorithms to Sparse and Missing Data."
Tucker, Catherine, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6841-23. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, January 2023. Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets Working Paper.
"Content Moderation at the Infrastructure Layer: Evidence from Parler."
Agarwal, Saharsh, Uttara M. Ananthakrishnan, and Catherine Tucker, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6958-23. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, 2023.
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This course provides you with a balanced perspective of the crypto space. Over eight weeks, you’ll gain insights into the economics of blockchain technologies, including digital assets, stablecoins, DeFi, NFTs, and Web 3 applications. You’ll also learn about the future of blockchain technology and the possibilities that lie ahead in the crypto space — from finance to the metaverse.
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