Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/331521 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
ECIPE Occasional Paper No. 11/2025
Publisher: 
European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), Brussels
Abstract: 
The introduction of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018 created conditions that could raise the cost of trading services with the EU, especially where cross-border transfers of personal data are required. This paper examines whether the GDPR has truly affected trade in digital services between EU member states and third countries. Using a triple-difference strategy that compares EU trade with partners whose cross-border transfer regimes differ from the EU's conditional model to a suitable control group, this paper accounts for the fact that, over time, many partners have adopted a similar conditional model (so-called spillovers), following the phenomenon known as the "Brussels effect." Identification relies on two elements: sectoral data intensity, measured by the share of firms in each sector participating in the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (DPF), and partner regime alignment, distinguishing EU-style conditional regimes from non-aligned regimes. We estimate a structural-gravity PPML model with high-dimensional fixed effects, complemented by robustness checks using input-output-based intensity measures and a non-gravity triple difference on growth.
Subjects: 
Data protection
EU law
Interregional trade
Foreign trade structure
EU states
Document Type: 
Research Report

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