European Privacy Law and Global Markets for Data
58 Pages Posted: 20 Apr 2020 Last revised: 7 Jul 2020
There are 2 versions of this paper
European Privacy Law and Global Markets for Data
European Privacy Law and Global Markets for Data
Date Written: June 29, 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: Privacy, competition policy, antitrust, Internet regulation, compliance risk, GDPR, Brussels effect, cookies, web tracking
JEL Classification: K21, L12, L15, L86
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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