This paper investigates price differences between online and offline retail channels in the EU Digital Single Market. Using price and sales data for ten different product categories sold both offline and online in 21 EU countries in 2009, and correcting for product characteristics, we find...

It is often assumed that consumers benefit from the internet because it offers a “long tail” with more variety of products to choose from. However, search costs may block the long tail effect and result in the dominance of superstars. This paper examines the variety hypothesis in the entire...

This report presents empirical evidence about the obstacles that European consumers face when trying to buy online goods and services in other EU Member States. It relies on data from a consumer survey carried out in February-March 2015 in the EU28. By comparing named websites with...

This report presents empirical evidence about the internationalisation of European online firms. After describing some characteristics that define the internationalisation of firms engaged in online activities, it mainly focuses on the obstacles that these firms face when trying to sell their...

This paper examines the economic impact of a change in retail technology - the shift from offline to online shopping – and a change in policy – measures to reduce the barriers to online trade perceived by consumers and retailers. Contrary to the prevalent micro-economic partial equilibrium...

This study investigates the welfare impact of lifting geo-blocking restrictions to cross-border e-commerce in the EU, using a dataset for consumer electronics products in ten European countries for the period 2012-2105. We simulated two counterfactual scenarios where geo-blocking is either fully...

Despite the rapidly growing volume and economic importance of data in the digital economy, the legal framework for data ownership, access and trade remains incompletely defined in the EU and elsewhere. De facto data ownership dominates and often leads to fragmentation or anti-commons problems in...

This paper is composed of two different parts. In the first part we provide a review of the existing literature dealing with geo-blocking in copyright-protected content. The material is divided between studies that focus on non-audio-visual content and those dealing wit h audiovisual content. In...

In February 2018 the EU adopted the Geo-Blocking Regulation that prohibits any attempts to restrict consumer access to e-commerce websites on the basis of their nationality or country of residence. This paper seeks to evaluate the impact of that policy on crossborder e-commerce. We use page view...

We present a novel generic theoretical framework to analyze the incentives agents have to engage in n-way data sharing or 'data pooling' and the factors affecting those incentives. Based on the results obtained, we provide policy recommendations aimed at fostering health data pooling. Section 1...