Regulatory Spillovers and Data Governance: Evidence from the GDPR

forthcoming in Marketing Science

62 Pages Posted: 20 Apr 2020 Last revised: 15 Oct 2021

See all articles by Christian Peukert

Christian Peukert

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

Stefan Bechtold

ETH Zürich

Michail Batikas

Nova School of Business and Economics

Tobias Kretschmer

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

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: October 14, 2021

Abstract

We document short-run changes in websites and the web technology industry with the introduction of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We follow more than 110,000 websites and their third-party HTTP requests for twelve months before and six months after the GDPR became effective and show that websites substantially reduced their interactions with web technology providers. Importantly, this also holds for websites not legally bound by the GDPR. These changes are especially pronounced among less popular websites and regarding the collection of personal data. We document an increase in market concentration in web technology services after the introduction of the GDPR: While all firms suffer losses, the largest vendor -- Google -- loses relatively less and significantly increases market share in important markets such as advertising and analytics. Our findings contribute to the discussion on how regulating privacy, artificial intelligence and other areas of data governance relate to data minimization, regulatory competition, and market structure.

Keywords: Privacy, competition policy, antitrust, Internet regulation, regulatory competition, compliance risk, GDPR, Brussels effect, cookies, web tracking, data governance, data minimization

JEL Classification: K21, L12, L15, L86

Suggested Citation

Peukert, Christian and Bechtold, Stefan and Batikas, Michail and Kretschmer, Tobias, Regulatory Spillovers and Data Governance: Evidence from the GDPR (October 14, 2021). forthcoming in Marketing Science, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3560392 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3560392

Christian Peukert (Contact Author)

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

Switzerland

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.christian-peukert.com/

Stefan Bechtold

ETH Zürich ( email )

IFW E 47.2
Zurich, 8092
Switzerland
+41-44-632-2670 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.ip.ethz.ch/people/bechtold

Michail Batikas

Nova School of Business and Economics ( email )

Campus de Carcavelos
Rua da Holanda, 1
Carcavelos, 2775-405
Portugal

Tobias Kretschmer

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) - Faculty of Business Administration (Munich School of Management) ( email )

Kaulbachstr. 45
Munich, DE 80539
Germany

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

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