Regulatory Spillovers and Data Governance: Evidence from the GDPR
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Date
2022-07
Publication Type
Journal Article
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yes
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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 12 months before and 6 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: Although 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.
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Publication status
published
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Book title
Journal / series
Volume
41 (4)
Pages / Article No.
318 - 340
Publisher
INFORMS
Event
Edition / version
Methods
Software
Geographic location
Date collected
Date created
Subject
Privacy; Competition policy; Antitrust; Internet regulation; Regulatory competition; Compliance risk; GDPR; Brussels effect; Cookies; Web tracking; Data governance; Data minimization; Data collection; Data privacy; Privacy regulation; Artificial intelligence; Websites
Organisational unit
03795 - Bechtold, Stefan / Bechtold, Stefan