This note presents a non-technical summary of the latest economic research studies on cross-border e-commerce in the EU and elsewhere, and combines this with findings from older research on this subject. It compares online with offline cross-border trade and investigates the differences in...

An important EU Digital Single Market policy objective is to achieve an open and integrated market for online e-commerce in the EU, to make it easy for consumers to go outside their domestic market and shop online in other EU Member States. This study applies a standard gravity model of...

This paper examines the impact of one transmission channel for the economic effects of a shift from offline to online consumption: cross-border trade costs. We use data on cross-border e-commerce between EU Member States to estimate the implied cross-border trade cost reduction when consumers...

This report presents empirical evidence about the obstacles that European consumers face when trying to buy online goods and services in other EU Member States. It relies on data from a consumer survey carried out in February-March 2015 in the EU28. By comparing named websites with respondents'...

This report presents empirical evidence about the internationalisation of European online firms. After describing some characteristics that define the internationalisation of firms engaged in online activities, it mainly focuses on the obstacles that these firms face when trying to sell their...

This paper examines the economic impact of a change in retail technology - the shift from offline to online shopping - and a change in policy - measures to reduce the barriers to online trade perceived by consumers and retailers. Contrary to the prevalent micro-economic partial equilibrium...

In this paper, we present the results of a study which investigated the welfare impact of lifting geo-blocking restrictions to cross-border e-commerce in the EU, using a dataset for consumer electronics products in ten European countries for the period 2012-2105. We simulated two counterfactual...

Despite the rapidly growing volume and economic importance of data in the digital economy, the legal framework for data ownership, access and trade remains incompletely defined in the EU and elsewhere. De facto data ownership dominates and often leads to fragmentation or anti-commons problems in...

This study measures the extent of cross-border geo-blocking and the impact on product availability and pricing for three non-audio-visual digital media products (music, e-books and games) in the EU Digital Single Market. We find that cross-border access to online media stores is generally...