Working Paper: NBER ID: w17124
Authors: Avi Goldfarb; Catherine Tucker
Abstract: Information and communication technology now enables firms to collect detailed and potentially intrusive data about their customers both easily and cheaply. This means that privacy concerns are no longer limited to government surveillance and public figures' private lives. The empirical literature on privacy regulation shows that privacy regulation may affect the extent and direction of data-based innovation. We also show that the impact of privacy regulation can be extremely heterogeneous. Therefore, we argue that digitization means that privacy policy is now a part of innovation policy.
Keywords: privacy; innovation; data regulation; online advertising; healthcare
JEL Codes: O31; O38
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| EMR adoption (I18) | Healthcare outcomes (I11) |
| Adoption of electronic medical records (I18) | Neonatal mortality rates (J13) |
| Privacy regulations (K24) | EMR adoption (I18) |
| Privacy regulations imposed by the European ePrivacy Directive (L96) | Effectiveness of display advertising (C91) |