Economic Research on Privacy Regulation: Lessons from the GDPR and Beyond / Garrett Johnson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johnson, Garrett.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w30705.

NBER working paper series no. w30705

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2022.

Summary:

This paper reviews the economic literature on the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). I highlight key challenges for studying the regulation including the difficulty of finding a suitable control group, variable firm compliance and regulatory enforcement, as well as the regulation's impact on data observability. The economic literature on the GDPR to date has largely--though not universally--documented harms to firms. These harms include firm performance, innovation, competition, the web, and marketing. On the elusive consumer welfare side, the literature documents some objective privacy improvements as well as helpful survey evidence. The literature also examines the consequences of the GDPR's design decisions and illuminates how the GDPR works in practice. Finally, I suggest opportunities for future research on the GDPR as well as privacy regulation and privacy-related innovation more broadly.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2022.