Antitrust and Restrictions on Privacy in the Digital Economy

Nicholas Economides () and Ioannis Lianos ()
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Ioannis Lianos: President, Hellenic Competition Commission and Professor of Global Competition Law and Public Policy, Faculty of Laws, University College London

No 20-03, Working Papers from NET Institute

Abstract: We present a model of a market failure based on a requirement provision by digital platforms in the acquisition of personal information from users of other products/services. We establish the economic harm from the market failure and the requirement using traditional antitrust methodology. Eliminating the requirement and the market failure by creating a functioning market for the sale of personal information would create a functioning market for personal information that would benefit users. Even though market harm is established under the assumption that consumers are perfectly informed about the value of their privacy, we show that when users are not well informed, there can be additional harms to this market failure.

Keywords: personal information; Internet search; Google; Facebook; digital; privacy; restrictions of competition; exploitation; market failure; hold up; merger; abuse of a dominant position; unfair commercial practices; excessive data extraction; self-determination; behavioral manipulation; remedies; portability; opt-out. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K21 L1 L12 L4 L41 L5 L86 L88 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ict, nep-ind, nep-law, nep-mic and nep-pay
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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