How to measure privacy-related consumer harm in merger analysis? : a critical reassessment of the EU Commission's merger control in data-driven markets
| dc.contributor.author | DEUTSCHER, Elias | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2018-08-30T13:23:01Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2018-08-30T13:23:01Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2018 | |
| dc.description.abstract | This study contributes to the current debate on how privacy concerns can and should be integrated into merger analysis. First, I contend that while competition authorities increasingly account for the role of personal data as a source of market power and entry barriers, privacy-related consumer harm still remains a blind spot in merger analysis. Second, I discuss how this analytical gap can be filled by mapping out three potential theories of privacy-related consumer harm: namely, privacy as an element of product quality, privacy as a feature of consumer choice, and privacy as non-monetary price. Third, and this is my major claim and contribution, this study proposes willingness-to-pay studies in the form of conjoint analysis as a methodology that enables competition authorities to quantify privacy-related consumer harm in monetary terms. In a fourth section, this study discusses potential objections to this approach. In so doing, it shows that the widespread opposition against the incorporation of privacy into merger analysis is based on a ‘privacy fallacy’. This ‘privacy fallacy’ derives from the erroneous assumption that deteriorations in the level of privacy protection as a consequence of a merger automatically amount to a breach of data-protection rules which should be addressed by data protection authorities, but which do not constitute an antitrust concern. | en |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en |
| dc.identifier.issn | 1725-6739 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1814/58064 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.orcid.upload | true | * |
| dc.relation.ispartofseries | EUI LAW | en |
| dc.relation.ispartofseries | 2018/13 | en |
| dc.rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess | en |
| dc.subject | Big data | en |
| dc.subject | Competition law | en |
| dc.subject | Privacy | en |
| dc.subject | Merger control | en |
| dc.subject | Conjoint analysis | en |
| dc.title | How to measure privacy-related consumer harm in merger analysis? : a critical reassessment of the EU Commission's merger control in data-driven markets | en |
| dc.type | Working Paper | en |
| dspace.entity.type | Publication | |
| person.identifier.other | 38137 | |
| relation.isAuthorOfPublication | 2f5f0823-c692-41db-97cd-89bb7bbe29d6 | |
| relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery | 2f5f0823-c692-41db-97cd-89bb7bbe29d6 |
