“GDPR and the Lost Generation of Innovative Apps” was published this month in the National Bureau of Economic Research by Rebecca Janßen, Reinhold Kesler, Michael E. Kummer, and Joel Waldfogel. Here is the abstract:

Using data on 4.1 million apps at the Google Play Store from 2016 to 2019, we document that GDPR induced the exit of about a third of available apps; and in the quarters following implementation, entry of new apps fell by half. We estimate a structural model of demand and entry in the app market. Comparing long-run equilibria with and without GDPR, we find that GDPR reduces consumer surplus and aggregate app usage by about a third. Whatever the privacy benefits of GDPR, they come at substantial costs in foregone innovation.

“GDPR and the Lost Generation of Innovative Apps” — emphasis mine
Janßen, Kesler, Kummer, and Waldfogel

Please allow me to write this abstract in a different way:

…we find that GDPR has effectively removed about a third of apps that relied on ingesting and selling data as a value add to advertisers and has reduced junk app usage by the same amount. The privacy benefits of GDPR are valuable, and they have forced apps to substantially increase their value to consumers using innovation.

Me