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TILEC Seminar: Stefan Bechtold (ETH)

Date: Time: 10:45 Location: ONLINE Meeting

European Privacy Law and Global Markets for Data

We demonstrate how privacy law interacts with competition and trade policy in the context of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We follow more than 110,000 websites for 18 months to show that websites reduced their connections to web technology providers after GDPR became effective, especially regarding requests involving personal data. This also holds for websites catering to non-EU audiences and therefore not bound by GDPR. We further document an increase in market concentration in web technology services after the introduction of GDPR. While most firms lose market share, the leading firm, Google, significantly increases market share


Stefan Bechtold  is Professor of Intellectual Property and Head of the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He is a graduate of the University of Tübingen School of Law, Germany, and of Stanford Law School (JSM 2002). He was a Visiting Professor at New York University School of Law and the University of Haifa, a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, and spent research visits in Amsterdam, Berkeley, Chicago, Munich, and Singapore. Stefan Bechtold is a member of the foundation board of the Study Center Gerzensee (a foundation of the Swiss National Bank), where he is involved in the organization of law & economics courses for doctoral students. He is also a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, advising the ministry on all issues of economic policy, a board member of the Society for Empirical Legal Studies, and an Advisor to the Copyright Project of the American Law Institute.

His research interests include intellectual property, Internet, privacy, telecommunications, and antitrust law, law & technology, as well as law & economics.

He has published in journals such as the American Journal of Comparative Law; Communications of the ACM; HotNets Proceedings; Journal of Empirical Legal Studies; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; Indiana Law Journal; Journal of Law, Economics & Organization; Southern California Law Review; and various European law journals. In his youth, Stefan Bechtold composed numerous orchestral and chamber music works which have been awarded several composition prizes and have been repeatedly performed and broadcast.


Time : 10:45-11:45

* Please contact TILEC should you wish to attend the online meeting