Big data at the crossroads of antitrust and consumer protection

Ginger Zhe Jin and Liad Wagman

Information Economics and Policy, 2021, vol. 54, issue C

Abstract: The rise of big data in the global economy has led to concerns about antitrust and consumer protection, but policy makers often treat the two areas separately. The separate treatment is justified in classical markets because antitrust tends to focus on firm-to-firm interactions, while consumer protection deals with firm-to-consumer interfaces. The two areas may also be subject to different laws, and any crossovers between the two have tended to be small. However, big data blurs the distinction between the two, causing them to intertwine, complement or even conflict with each other. This paper uses examples to illustrate why that is the case and identifies areas that would benefit from more economic research.

Keywords: Data; Digital economy; Platforms; Regulation; Antitrust; Consumer protection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D8 L1 L2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167624520300792
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:54:y:2021:i:c:s0167624520300792

DOI: 10.1016/j.infoecopol.2020.100865

Access Statistics for this article

Information Economics and Policy is currently edited by D. Waterman

More articles in Information Economics and Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().