Stefan Bechtold (ETH Zurich) and Christian Peukert (HEC Lausanne) have been awarded CHF 1.15 million by the Swiss National Science Foundation for their four-year project, "Digital Market Regulation: Monitoring Enforcement and Evaluating Outcomes". The research combines the perspectives of management, economics and law to study how regulatory frameworks in digital markets—like privacy, competition, and content moderation—are enforced and how firms respond.
The project aims to develop new tools for measuring regulatory effectiveness in the digital economy, focusing on key issues such as how platforms collect and use personal data, how firms lobby for favorable regulations, and the impact of privacy laws in different regions. Researchers will also analyze the influence of regulations on online competition and content diversity, studying how antitrust laws and copyright enforcement shape market dynamics.
This interdisciplinary initiative, partially hosted at the ETH Center for Law and Econmics and at HEC Lausanne’s Digital Markets Lab, will draw on a wide range of data sources and advanced methodologies to generate evidence-based insights. The project aims to inform policy-making in Switzerland, the EU, the U.S., and beyond, ultimately shaping future approaches to digital market regulation.