Regulatory Attempts Research Articles

Who is contingent on whom? The internet on society, or the society on internet?

AbstractThis concept paper attempts to look at the many ways in which production, distribution and utilization of media content has completely changed in today’s digitised world. It tries to explore the newly emerging ideas around Journalism and Communication practices and the concerns that now prevail in social and professional echelons about the modern day contours that all media have acquired .The discussion dwells upon how the internet and new media tools have steadily and surely changed the very fabric of societies, and the basic dynamics of present day living. It examines how anarchy of sorts in access and delivery of content and the irrepressible usage of technology enabled platforms juxtapose with the telecom and other regulatory mechanisms and attempts that are being put in place to control the surge in media proliferation. The Paper may help to explore the relevance of newer means/models of regulation and control in a truly fast changing and emerging media space. The stupendous rate at which newer media and internet applications are getting thrown up for use abets to the fact that it is as much about w hat people do with the internet as what the internet does to people.

Verkannte Propheten? Zur 'Expertenkultur' (west-)deutscher Werbekommunikatoren bis zur Rezession 1966/67

This is less a book about the history of advertising in modern Germany, a subject which has recently garnered some attention from cultural historians and those working on the history of consumerism, but rather a collective biography of the admen who pioneered and built the country’s advertising industry. Basing his work on an impressive sample of nearly four hundred independent advertisers and advertising executives in corporations, Hirt tells the story of a somewhat unsuccessful, or at least incomplete, professionalization process between the late Imperial era and the early Federal Republic. The heart of this study, in many ways, is the admen’s complicated relationship with the National Socialist regime, with its regulatory attempts to rein in the advertising market, and with the promise of social recognition some hoped this would entail. Lacking standardized professional requirements, German advertisers, Hirt argues, continuously saw themselves on the defensive against widespread critiques of commercial advertising. In this, they were part of a broader story of Germany’s sometimes uneasy embrace of commercial consumer culture from the late nineteenth century.

Emotional reactivity and regulation associated with fluent and stuttered utterances of preschool-age children who stutter

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to assess the relation between emotional reactivity and regulation associated with fluent and stuttered utterances of preschool-age children who stutter (CWS) and those who do not (CWNS). ParticipantsParticipants were eight 3 to 6-year old CWS and eight CWNS of comparable age and gender. MethodsParticipants were exposed to three emotion-inducing overheard conversations—neutral, angry and happy—and produced a narrative following each overheard conversation. From audio-video recordings of these narratives, coded behavioral analysis of participants’ negative and positive affect and emotion regulation associated with stuttered and fluent utterances was conducted. ResultsResults indicated that CWS were significantly more likely to exhibit emotion regulation attempts prior to and during their fluent utterances following the happy as compared to the negative condition, whereas CWNS displayed the opposite pattern. Within-group assessment indicated that CWS were significantly more likely to display negative emotion prior to and during their stuttered than fluent utterances, particularly following the positive overheard conversation. ConclusionsAfter exposure to emotional-inducing overheard conversations, changes in preschool-age CWS's emotion and emotion regulatory attempts were associated with the fluency of their utterances.Learning outcomes: After reading this article, the reader will be able to: (1) describe various measures of emotional reactivity and regulation, including parent-based reports and behavioral coding, and how they may contribute to childhood stuttering; (2) explain emotional differences between the stuttered and fluent utterances of CWS and CWNS; and (3) discuss how emotions may contribute to CWS’ instances of stuttering.

Shadows Amid Sunshine: Regulating Financial Conflicts in Medical Research

Under brand new rules implementing the Physician Payments Sunshine Act (Sunshine Act), a wide range of financial relationships, including many research-related payments, between industry, physicians, and teaching hospitals will be publicly disclosed through comprehensive, standardized payment reporting. The Sunshine Act represents the latest in a series of regulatory attempts to address financial conflicts of interest that may bias research conduct and threaten subject safety. This article summarizes the major aspects of the Sunshine Act affecting medical research, how it interacts with existing laws and policies, and identifies important unresolved issues and implementation challenges that still lie ahead with the rollout of the legislation underway. The Sunshine Act primarily depends on disclosure as a regulatory tool. As such, its long-term impact remains open to question. Disclosure in this context may have limited utility given, among other reasons, uncertainty about who the intended recipients are and their ability to use the information effectively. Apart from the insufficiency of transparency, this article further explores how proportionality, fairness, and accountability considerations make optimal regulation of financial conflicts in medical research quite challenging.

A Bolder Step towards Privacy Protection in Hong Kong: A Statutory Cause of Action

AbstractPrivacy is an important value which is internationally recognised as worthy of protection. However, it has been under constant challenge for a number of reasons including changes in technology which facilitate informational and other forms of surveillance and privacy-invasive media practices. Because of its multi-faceted nature, privacy is typically regulated by a variety of different means. Data protection laws seek to ensure the fair handling of personal information. Criminal sanctions are used to outlaw more serious invasions of privacy, including certain breaches of communications privacy and uses of surveillance devices. Assorted civil actions are relied on to protect broader interests in privacy. However, the piecemeal nature of privacy protection is often found to be inadequate and victims frequently lack appropriate remedies. Therefore, many common law countries either provide for or are actively considering the introduction of civil remedies to specifically address general privacy issues. There has also been active consideration of measures to regulate media organisations, especially in the light of the Murdoch scandal in the United Kingdom. The inadequacies in the law have prompted calls for law reform in Hong Kong, and recommendations have been made in the report on Civil Liability for Invasion of Privacy (2004). It examined the need of individuals to be able to seek civil remedies for unwarranted invasion of privacy. In it the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong (HKLRC) proposed the introduction of specific statutory torts of privacy to cover acts and conduct frustrating the reasonable expectation of an individual’s privacy. It proposed that a person, who invaded another’s privacy by intruding upon their solitude or seclusion, or by intruding into their private affairs or concerns, should be liable in tort. It also recommended another tort for invasion of privacy arising out of public disclosure of private facts. This article focuses on the issue of civil liability and analyses the inadequacies of existing laws and regulatory regimes and attempts to come up with a model that is most suitable for Hong Kong. It takes the HKLRC’s recommendations as its starting point but refines and modifies them, drawing on the insights that have since become available from the work of other law reform bodies and further developments in overseas case law.

A Bolder Step towards Privacy Protection in Hong Kong: A Statutory Cause of Action

AbstractPrivacy is an important value which is internationally recognised as worthy of protection. However, it has been under constant challenge for a number of reasons including changes in technology which facilitate informational and other forms of surveillance and privacy-invasive media practices. Because of its multi-faceted nature, privacy is typically regulated by a variety of different means. Data protection laws seek to ensure the fair handling of personal information. Criminal sanctions are used to outlaw more serious invasions of privacy, including certain breaches of communications privacy and uses of surveillance devices. Assorted civil actions are relied on to protect broader interests in privacy. However, the piecemeal nature of privacy protection is often found to be inadequate and victims frequently lack appropriate remedies. Therefore, many common law countries either provide for or are actively considering the introduction of civil remedies to specifically address general privacy issues. There has also been active consideration of measures to regulate media organisations, especially in the light of the Murdoch scandal in the United Kingdom. The inadequacies in the law have prompted calls for law reform in Hong Kong, and recommendations have been made in the report on Civil Liability for Invasion of Privacy (2004). It examined the need of individuals to be able to seek civil remedies for unwarranted invasion of privacy. In it the Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong (HKLRC) proposed the introduction of specific statutory torts of privacy to cover acts and conduct frustrating the reasonable expectation of an individual’s privacy. It proposed that a person, who invaded another’s privacy by intruding upon their solitude or seclusion, or by intruding into their private affairs or concerns, should be liable in tort. It also recommended another tort for invasion of privacy arising out of public disclosure of private facts. This article focuses on the issue of civil liability and analyses the inadequacies of existing laws and regulatory regimes and attempts to come up with a model that is most suitable for Hong Kong. It takes the HKLRC’s recommendations as its starting point but refines and modifies them, drawing on the insights that have since become available from the work of other law reform bodies and further developments in overseas case law.

The Role of Competition Law in Regulatory European Private Law

In the last years we have seen the emergence of a new methodology in European private law, which (finally) dared to shift away from a classical comparative approach to one, which takes European Union law as its proper starting point. Classical European private law scholarship has mainly been backwards looking insofar as the law of the Member States, and predominantly the old codifications, determined both form and substance of new regulatory attempts. Today, this traditional approach still remains the predominant working method of the acquis group. But recent improvements in the academic debate surrounding European private law suggest a more European approach to questions of harmonisation. Taking the Treaties, secondary legislation and jurisprudence of the ECJ as its premise, academics have attempted to extrapolate common ‘European’ principles and rules to provide desperately needed substance in the search for more coherence in the continuing harmonisation process of private law. Some characteristics should be stressed as far as this new scholarship is concerned. First, it is heavily influenced by an idea which can be called ‘Europeanisation of law through hybridisation of remedies’. Second, the methodology and reasoning on which this scholarship relies can only be explained on the basis of the European Economic Constitution. Alongside these main aspects we also find a more functionalistic approach as to how modern private law should be shaped in general. Last, new forms of governance allow for more flexibility in the law-making process, also in view of the actors involved in that process. It is against this background that this contribution seeks to demonstrate in what way competition law can serve as a tool to directly or indirectly influence and regulate private law in the Member States; and, more generally, how it can further the Europeanisation of law. In terms of methodology, I mainly rely on the idea that developments in European private law can be explained by aid of those areas which lie at the periphery of classical private law but at the core of the law of the internal market. To this end, it is necessary to first and foremost understand when and how competition and private law interact in the Union. The aim is to identify both instances in which competition and private law overlap substantially and in what way they complement each other.

Emotional reactivity and regulation in preschool-age children who stutter

Purpose.This study experimentally investigated behavioral correlates of emotional reactivity and emotion regulation and their relation to speech (dis)fluency in preschool-age children who do (CWS) and do not (CWNS) stutter during emotion-eliciting conditions. Method.Participants (18 CWS, 14 boys; 18 CWNS, 14 boys) completed two experimental tasks (1) a neutral (“apples and leaves in a transparent box,” ALTB) and (2) a frustrating (“attractive toy in a transparent box,” ATTB) task, both of which were followed by a narrative task. Dependent measures were emotional reactivity (positive affect, negative affect), emotion regulation (self-speech, distraction) exhibited during the ALTB and the ATTB tasks, percentage of stuttered disfluencies (SDs) and percentage of non-stuttered disfluencies (NSDs) produced during the narratives. Results.Results indicated that preschool-age CWS exhibited significantly more negative emotion and more self-speech than preschool-age CWNS. For CWS only, emotion regulation behaviors (i.e., distraction, self-speech) during the experimental tasks were predictive of stuttered disfluencies during the subsequent narrative tasks. Furthermore, for CWS there was no relation between emotional processes and non-stuttered disfluencies, but CWNS's negative affect was significantly related to nonstuttered disfluencies. Conclusions.In general, present findings support the notion that emotional processes are associated with childhood stuttering. Specifically, findings are consistent with the notion that preschool-age CWS are more emotionally reactive than CWNS and that their self-speech regulatory attempts may be less than effective in modulating their emotions.Educational objectives. The reader will be able to: (a) communicate the relevance of studying the role of emotion in developmental stuttering close to the onset of stuttering and (b) describe the main findings of the present study in relation to previous studies that have used different methodologies to investigate the role of emotion in developmental stuttering of young children who stutter.

The One Weird Old Trick to Frustrate Online Scammers, Reduce Fees for Consumers, and Make Americans Happier With Their Finances

What do Match.com, Gold's Gym, Time Magazine, and AOL all have in common with Internet hucksters? They've all been caught using automatically recurring transactions to squeeze every last dime out of unwilling customers. Using electronic payment systems, such as credit cards and debit cards, unscrupulous merchants are able to preauthorize deductions from a consumer's account. In doing so, they can conduct selling, or sales in which a consumer participates in a transaction as a default, and must act affirmatively to cancel the exchange. Automatic selling and preauthorized payment are dangerous for consumers, because they can easily lead to overpayment or ignorance of a transaction's true cost, and incentivize the merchant to create obstacles to cancellation. This paper contains case studies demonstrating the spread of automatic selling throughout the modern economy, as it crops up in a diverse set of industries and contexts. It discusses the failures of current regulatory attempts to protect consumers from automatic selling; including efforts by the FTC, Congress, state government, and private regulation. Finally, it describes a simple, straightforward mechanism for reducing or eliminating the harms of automatic selling. This mechanism, called an catalogue, functions much like a bank balance sheet, providing consumers with a standardized interface, which lists all current open authorizations on a particular bank account or credit card. It allows consumers to cancel any authorization at any time with the press of a single button.

Current snapshot of the Turkish ESCO market

Turkey's Energy Efficiency Law (EEL), enacted in 2007, had been expected to transform the energy policies in government and private sectors, and offer opportunities for, then-impending, Turkish Energy Service Company (ESCO) market. Yet, the communiqué of the EEL related to ESCOs was released only recently in July 2012. In this work, we review the current status of the ESCO market in Turkey. We provide an outlook through the recent legal communiqué and present barriers, enabling factors, and opportunities, supported by country's financial and economic facts. ESCO-financing mechanism prevailing and the sources of financing in the country are also mentioned. The communiqué on ESCOs fits well in the chain of regulatory attempts to increase Turkey's competitiveness in the global markets. However, we anticipate that some of its principles and procedures to be enforced may be deterrent for small-scale candidate ESCOs and may slow down the expected development of the Turkish ESCO market. Otherwise, the communiqué should lead restructuring of a stronger ESCO market in Turkey.

Renewables portfolio, individual preferences and social values towards RES technologies

The massive deployment of renewable energy sources represents a high priority for Greece in order to comply with the Directive 2009/28/EC on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources by 2020. In this perspective, Aegean islands especially Lesvos, are endowed with a considerable potential of a portfolio of renewables, a fact that the entrepreneurial interest has already been targeted. However, regulatory attempts for a massive penetration of renewables do not take seriously into account preferences and risk perceptions of local communities where the proposed projects are to be installed. The aim of this study is to investigate individual preferences and social values towards specific technologies of renewables in Lesvos island. We apply an open-ended contingent valuation survey in order to analyze factors shaping public attitudes towards a portfolio of renewable technologies and estimate the economic welfare (Willingness To Pay) of the preferred technologies. We argue that such information is relevant for energy policy design and the establishment of effective measures for the promotion of renewable energy sources.

Collective Rights Management, Competition Policy and Cultural Diversity: EU Lawmaking at a Crossroads

In the digital networked environment, user’s expectations of getting easy access to digital content all the time and through a multitude of devices clash with the territorial structure of copyright and the complications of the licencing process. Under these circumstances, systems of collective rights management (CRM) offering a one-stop shop for rights clearance would seem to be an attractive solution to simplify cross-border licencing and save on transaction costs. In the European Union (EU), the Commission has made many attempts over the last decade not only to make collective management organisations (CMOs) work more efficiently but also to bring them from a system of national licences granted by national monopolies to a system of EU-wide authorisations. The European Commission’s Proposal of 12 July 2012 for a directive on CRM is a confirmation of this policy. However, it is questionable whether these regulatory attempts are compatible with cultural diversity interests. This paper discusses the role of CRM in ensuring cultural diversity and how a purely competition-orientated approach can impinge on this. It does so through analysing EU case law and the Commission’s Proposal.

The Regulation of Over-Indebtedness of Consumers in Europe

The economic crisis has fueled the debate on regulated state insolvencies. While debt relief is being considered for some states, citizens in some cases live their whole lives in debt. In some countries like Bulgaria, Italy, Croatia, Lithuania, and Poland, there are no consumer bankruptcy procedures which provide for an exemption from residual debt. In Spain, private debtors are entitled to debt relief on a maximum of only 50% of their debt and in other countries long periods of differing lengths are needed until complete exemption from remaining debt is granted. The length of time that information in which the publication of consumer bankruptcy notifications in public or private registers can be published also varies. There are thus no uniform regulations on how private individuals can make a clean financial start in Europe, and debtors and creditors have different opportunities. The differences in the level of protection entices insolvency tourism, which, however, is open only to those consumers who have remaining resources and who are capable of engaging in the organization of transborder debt relief. Poorer consumers are dependent on their national insolvency regime, if indeed there is any. The European legislator has done next to nothing to get to grips with over-indebtedness from a European perspective. So far, the European approach is limited to opening up consumer credit markets. The whole EU rhetoric is very much based on the idea that consumer credit is a source of income which could and should be used. The official documents might be read so as to entice consumers and credit institutions in particular in countries with a low total number of credits to engage in credit transactions. The dark side of consumer credit, i.e., delayed payments, the percentage of interest rates, compound interests, indebtedness, over-indebtedness, or insolvency, has not gained much attention at the EU level. To be sure, there are policy recommendations to fight social exclusion, and there are also more specific recommendations related to consumer over-indebtedness. However, none of these initiatives has led to concrete regulatory steps aimed at closing the gap between intensive regulatory attempts to open up the credit market and the social consequences in circumstances where the consumer is unable to satisfy a creditor. This is all the more J Consum Policy (2012) 35:417–419 DOI 10.1007/s10603-012-9213-x

Framing the consumer

With illegal downloading at the centre of debates about the creative economy, various policy initiatives and regulatory attempts have tried (and largely failed) to control, persuade and punish users into adhering to copyright law. Rights holders, policymakers, intermediaries and users each circulate and maintain particular attitudes about appropriate uses of digital media. This article maps the failure of regulation to control user behaviour, considers various policy and academic research approaches to understanding users, and introduces an analytical framework that re-evaluates user resistance as expressions of legitimate justifications. A democratic copyright policymaking process must accommodate the modes of justification offered by users to allow copyright law to reconnect with the public interest goals at its foundation.

Systemic Size, Bank Risk and Systemic Crises

This paper analyzes the relationship between systemic size, measured as the ratio of bank assets to GDP, and bank risk. Based on an international sample of banks, we demonstrate that systemic size does not affect bank risk-taking. However, and consistent with explanations that systemically large banks maximize the value of the financial safety net, we show that systemically larger banks engaged in more aggressive risk-taking during the recent crisis. The risk effect of systemic size during the recent crisis is higher for more leveraged banks, relatively undiversified banks and banks which have issued little or no subordinated debt. Crucially, the risk effect of systemic size during the recent crisis does not extend to other crisis periods. The recent crisis, therefore, appears to have been unique in terms of its behavioral implications for systemically large banks. Our results caution that regulatory attempts to restrict the risk-taking of systemically large banks should take the form of contingent regulations that come into effect under rare events such as the recent crisis.

Personal health care of internal medicine residents

IntroductionMedical residents, as part of their job to balance the demands of their work with caring for themselves so as to be mentally, emotionally, and physically sound to stay clinically competent. While regulatory and legislative attempts at limiting medical resident work hours have materialized but have yet to attain passage, there are fairly little data looking into how residents cope up with their demands and yet attend to their own personal health.DesignAnonymous mailed survey.SubjectsThree hundred and thirty-seven residents from all internal medicine residency programs within United States.MethodsWe conducted a survey in the form of a questionnaire that was sent by e-mail to the program directors of various internal medicine residency programs within the United States, and responses were collected between May 19 and June 21, 2009. Response was well appreciated with total number of participants of 337 with even demographical distribution in gender, residency year, AMG/IMG, age group. Seventy-one percent of the residents felt that they would prefer getting admitted to their own hospital for any acute medical or surgical condition. Of the 216 residents who have had received health care in the past, almost half of them chose their own hospital because of the proximity, while 45% did not choose their own hospital despite proximity. Two out of three residents missed their doctors appointments or cancelled them due to demands of medical training. Only half of the residents have a primary care physician and almost 80% of them did not have their yearly health checkup. Close to 30% held back information regarding their social and sexual history from their provider because of privacy and confidentiality concerns. Eighty percent of residents never received information about barriers that physicians may face in obtaining care for their socially embarrassing conditions. Seventy percent felt that their performance then was suboptimal because of that health condition and also felt sick but did not drop the call. Half of the residents had concerns that they might be having a psychiatric illness, but only 5% of them received a formal evaluation at their own hospital and 23 (12.4%) at an outside hospital.ConclusionsIt is very important to have more studies to emphasize on resident's physical and mental health and encourage them to have a primary care physician. There are several reasons preventing residents from getting a formal evaluation, confidentiality reasons, lack of time – schedule constraints, fear of being labeled, and social repercussions are few of them. Program directors should encourage the residents to not only care of the health of their patients but also be enthusiastic about their personal health issues for upgraded, revised patient care, and ultimately for their overall well-being.

Dopamine sudden depletion as a model for mixed depression

Up to date research on Bipolar Disorders’ phenomenology is in keeping with early descriptions made by E. Kraëpelin regarding the overlap in clinical presentation of both manic and depressive symptoms, namely, mixed states. The latter constitute a highly prevalent and characteristic clinical presentation of Bipolar Disorders’ and entail therapeutic difficulties, prognostic implications and increased suicidal risk. Notwithstanding, mixed states’, more specifically mixed depression, have been underestimated and bypassed to the point where currently neither diagnostic criteria nor specific therapeutic recommendations are provided. In addition to the lack of agreement on nosography and diagnostic criteria, mixed depression is usually excluded from Bipolar Disorders’ neurobiological models. Furthermore, renewed interest in the role of dopamine in Bipolar Disorders’ physiopathology has left aside hypothesis that may account for the aforementioned clinical presentation. Interestingly enough, other syndromes arising from sudden dopamine depletion such as neuroleptic dysphoria or withdrawal syndromes from dopaminergic drugs, bear remarkable clinical similarities with mixed depression. These syndromes have been subject of further research and may thus provide a model for mixed states’ physiopathology.Indeed, this article accounts for clinical similarities between mixed depression, neuroleptic induced dysphoria, and other behavioural syndromes arising from sudden dopamine depletion. After reviewing neurochemical basis of such syndromes we present, to the best of our knowledge, the first neurobiological hypothesis for mixed depression. Specifically, such hypothesis regards over activation symptoms as auto regulatory attempts to compensate for sudden dopaminergic depletion. This hypothesis provides with a beginning step for the neglected problem of mixed depression, a non-antithetic link between the dopaminergic hypothesis for both manic and depressive symptoms, a plausible explanation regarding inter individual variability to mixed depression susceptibility, and suggests new approaches for the development of novel treatments in which dopamine dysregulation should be targeted.

Challenges and innovation in the legal discourse

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to map out the voluntary‐regulatory dynamics of the discourse of human rights in a business context within the European Union (EU) regulatory environment.Design/methodology/approachThe paper examines the human rights and corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourses at the EU institutional level, in order to identify the interplay between soft and hard regulatory instruments that may contribute to the “human rights for business” normative landscape.FindingsA renewed focus at the international level on business and human rights has recently produced a United Nations (UN) framework document mapping corporate and state responsibilities in the area of human rights (the UN SRSG Ruggie Framework). Emphasising voluntariness as main tool, but also recognizing the importance of domestic uses of corporate law, of the investment and trade agreements, as well as of the international development cooperation tools, this framework report is in need of “operationalisation”. Starting from the interface between domestic and international developments in CSR and human rights for business, the paper explores the extent to which the European CSR context can offer tools and instruments towards such an operationalisation of the corporate responsibility for human rights and for social values generally. The article charts the dynamic relationship between EU soft regulatory attempts and the community mandatory legislation. Together, these define the EU's policy on CSR and human rights.Originality/valueThe paper reveals an innovative normative mosaic, made up of complex soft and hard regulatory instruments that should enable the EU to integrate economic, trade and human rights policies and, ultimately, to contribute to the new CSR framework proposed at the international level.

Maligne Hauttumoren in beruflich verursachten Narben

The occurrence of neoplasms in injury scars--as consequence of occupational accidents--may lead to compensation according to the statutory accident insurance regulations. According to newer regulatory attempts in occupational dermatology, certain criteria have to be met before the diagnosis of a neoplasm induced by a scar is accepted and compensation is due. Based on a retrospective analysis of 217 dermatological claim files between 2007 and 2009 of the IPA (including 22 follow-ups), medical opinions on neoplasms developing in possible occupational scars were re-evaluated using criteria of the German social accident insurance and the Bamberg medical bulletin, part II (Bamberger Merkblatt, BM II) to see how well they qualified for recognition as an occupational or accident-related disorder. Three cases were identified where a neoplasm was suspected of having developed in an occupationally-related scar. One of the insured events entitled for compensation. Following the guidelines of the BM II, this case was approved as an occupational disease secondary to injuries with resultant reduction in earning capacity, whereas the others did not meet the requirements. Two problems in evaluating malignant tumors in occupational scars are the long latency period and the documentation of a scar. The tumor excision specimen should be histologically re-examined to document the presence of an associated scar.

Privacy Regulation and Market Structure

This paper models how regulatory attempts to protect the privacy of consumers' data affect the competitive structure of data-intensive industries. Our results suggest that the commonly used consent-based approach may disproportionately benefit firms that offer a larger scope of services. Therefore, though privacy regulation imposes costs on all firms, it is small firms and new firms that are most adversely affected. We then show that this negative effect will be particularly severe for goods where the price mechanism does not mediate the effect, such as the advertising-supported internet.