This comment is submitted in response to the United States Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) hearing on Concentration and Competitiveness in the U.S. Economy as part of the Hearings on Competition and Consumer Protection in the 21st Century. We submit this comment based upon our extensive...

Tracking online user behavior is essential for targeted advertising and is at the heart of the business model of major online platforms. We analyze tracker-specific web browsing data to show how the prediction quality of consumer profiles varies with data size and scope. We find decreasing...

Privacy in competition cases is becoming common due to the importance of data. The literature thus focuses on the role of data and privacy in antitrust and merger control laws. Yet, the literature does not offer an empirical overview of the cases to understand how countries investigate the...

Dominant digital platforms such as Google and Facebook collect personal information of users by default precipitating a market failure in the market for personal information. We establish the economic harms from the market failure. We discuss conditions for eliminating the market failure and...

We analyze how different degrees of privacy protection affect industry profits, consumer welfare, and total welfare in a model with switching costs. Firms earn higher profits under weak privacy protection compared with strong or no privacy protection. The relationship between the degree of...

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....

Data is often at the core of digital products and services, especially when related to online advertising. This has made data protection and privacy a major policy concern. When surfing the web, consumers leave digital traces that can be used to build user profiles and infer preferences. We...

Every day, digital platforms generate, gather, store and analyze a huge amount of data, personal data included: these data can be elaborated to cluster individuals and offer personalized prices and services. Progressively individuals are losing control over their personal data and digital...