Economic Impact of the Digital Markets Act on European Businesses and the European Economy

This report, The Economic Impact of the Digital Markets Act on European Businesses and the European Economy, presents the first comprehensive assessment of how the implementation of the DMA is affecting the businesses that rely on widely used digital platform services in the EU. Authored by Professors Carmelo Cennamo, Tobias Kretschmer, Ioanna Constantiou, and Dr. Eliana Garcés, the study provides new academic insight into the value creation process of digital platform services and quantifies the loss of value from the efficiency losses brought about by the DMA provisions.

The findings present a significant impact: across service sectors, businesses could lose up to €114 billion in revenue—a reduction of 0.64% of total turnover from impairment of the largest digital platform services. The study further estimates annual revenue losses per worker up to €1,122 depending on the intensity of digital service use across sectors. The low estimate assumes reliance on website personalization and direct sales through online search while the higher estimate includes the usage of more sophisticated targeted marketing. Particularly hard hit are the accommodation and retail sectors, which intensively use digital platform services and could see revenue losses between €1 and €14 billion and between €4.4 and €59 billion respectively.

Overall, the cost borne by businesses from the DMA provision is driven by diminished reach, lower personalization, increased transaction costs, the loss of valuable integrations, and the lower incentives to invest in quality and innovation in core platform services. Effects are described for online search, online advertising, social networking, and intermediation services, presenting empirical evidence of impact.

The authors argue that the DMA, while designed to promote fairness and contestability, disrupts the organizational and technical structures through which platforms create value. Provisions limiting data use, prohibiting service integration, and restricting platform governance mechanisms weaken the tools that businesses rely on for visibility, targeting, and customer engagement. The report emphasizes the need to recognize these trade-offs and proposes that inter-platform competition and differentiated platform services may be better regulatory objectives than uniform disaggregation.