The EU is apparently thinking of adopting common and highly restrictive privacy standards which would make use of information by firms much more difficult and would require, for example, that data be retained only as long as necessary. This is touted as pro-consumer legislation. However, the effects would be profoundly anti-consumer. For one thing, ads would be much less targeted, and so consumers would get less valuable ads and would not learn as much about valuable prodcts and services aimed at their interests. For another effect, fraud and identity theft would become more common as sellers could not use stored information to verify identity. Finally, costs of doing buisness would increase, and so we would expect to see fewer innovations aimed at the European market, and some sellers might avoid that market entirely.
(Cross-posted from the Truth on the Market blog.)
Paul Rubin is senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute. Dr. Rubin has written or edited seven books, and published over one hundred articles and chapters on economics, law, and regulation in journals including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Legal Studies, the Journal of Law and Economics, and the Yale Journal on Regulation. He has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and other newspapers and magazines.
Dr. Rubin is also Dobbs Professor of Economics and Law at Emory University in Atlanta and editor in chief of Managerial and Decision Economics. He previously served as senior staff economist at President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, chief economist at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, director of advertising economics at the Federal Trade Commission, and vice-president of Glassman-Oliver Economic Consultants, Inc., a litigation consulting firm in Washington. He has taught economics at the University of Georgia, City University of New York, VPI, and George Washington University Law School. Dr. Rubin is a graduate of the University of Cincinnati and holds a PhD from Purdue University.
