Advertisers use online customer data to target their marketing appeals. This has heightened consumers' privacy concerns, leading governments to pass laws designed to protect consumer privacy by restricting the use of data and by restricting online tracking techniques used by websites. We use the...

We examine whether the growth of the internet has reduced the effectiveness of government regulation of advertising. Specifically, we combine variation in state and local regulation of offline alcohol advertising with data from field tests that randomized exposure to online advertising for 275...

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....