European Privacy Law and Global Markets for Data

Batikas, Michail; Bechtold, Stefan; Kretschmer, Tobias; Peukert, Christian

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European Privacy Law and Global Markets for Data

CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP14475

56 Pages Posted: 25 Mar 2020

See all articles by Michail Batikas

Tobias Kretschmer

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) - Faculty of Business Administration (Munich School of Management); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Christian Peukert

University of Lausanne - Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC Lausanne)

There are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: March 2020

Abstract

We demonstrate how privacy law interacts with competition and trade policy in the context of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We follow more than 110,000 websites for 18 months to show that websites reduced their connections to web technology providers after GDPR became effective, especially regarding requests involving personal data. This also holds for websites catering to non-EU audiences and therefore not bound by GDPR. We further document an increase in market concentration in web technology services after the introduction of GDPR. While most firms lose market share, the leading firm, Google, significantly increases market share.

Keywords: Antitrust, Brussels effect, competition policy, compliance risk, cookies, GDPR, Internet regulation, privacy, web tracking

JEL Classification: K21, L12, L15, L86

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Batikas, Michail and Bechtold, Stefan and Kretschmer, Tobias and Peukert, Christian, European Privacy Law and Global Markets for Data (March 2020). CEPR Discussion Paper No. DP14475, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3560282