Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/213872 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
ZEW Discussion Papers No. 19-064
Publisher: 
ZEW - Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung, Mannheim
Abstract: 
Policy makers are increasingly concerned about the combination of market power and massive data collection in digital markets. This concern is fueled by the theoretical prediction that more market power causes firms to collect ever more data from their users. We investigate the relationship between market power and data collection empirically. We analyze data about more than 1.5 million mobile applications in several thousand submarkets of Google's Play Store. We observe these data for over two years and combine information on an app's data collection with information about its competitive environment. Our analysis highlights a robust positive relationship between market power and data collection. We find that more data are being collected in concentrated markets, and apps with higher market shares collect more data. This pattern robustly emerges across a series of cross-sectional and panel regressions as well as a series of specifications that exploit exogenous variation.
Subjects: 
Competition
Market Power
Privacy
User Data
Apps
JEL: 
L17
D4
D85
D29
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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