privatevalue

Private value is a term used across disciplines to denote a value that is intended to remain confidential or is personally owned by an agent. The exact meaning varies by field, but common threads include secrecy, individualized assessment, or restricted access.

In auction theory, a private value refers to a bidder's own estimate of the item’s worth that does not depend on other bidders' information. Private values contrast with common value models, where the item has a value that is uncertain but shared. In private value auctions, bidding strategies depend on beliefs about others' valuations, risk attitudes, and information asymmetry. Real-world examples include art auctions where each bidder has private taste and assessment.

In cryptography and privacy-preserving computation, a private value is a secret input held by a participant or stored in a secure module. Protocols such as secure multiparty computation or zero-knowledge proofs operate on private values without revealing them to others. The protection of private values is central to maintaining confidentiality, authenticity, and privacy guarantees.

In software engineering, private value can refer informally to a data member labeled private in an object, restricting access to the containing class. This usage supports encapsulation and data integrity by preventing external parties from reading or modifying the value directly.

Because the term is used in multiple domains, context is essential to determine its exact meaning when encountered in literature or discussion.