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on Intellectual Property Rights |
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Issue of 2019‒01‒21
three papers chosen by Giovanni Ramello Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale “Amedeo Avogadro” |
| By: | Hong Luo (Harvard Business School); Julie Holland Mortimer (Boston College) |
| Abstract: | Copyright infringement may result from frictions preventing legal consumption, but may also reveal demand. Motivated by this fact, we run a field experiment in which we contact firms that are caught infringing on expensive digital images. Emails to all firms include a link to the licensing page of the infringed image; for treated firms, we add links to a significantly cheaper licensing site. Making infringers aware of the cheaper option leads to a fourteen-fold increase in the ex-post licensing rate. Two additional experimental interventions are designed to reduce search costs for (i) price and (ii) product information. Both interventions—immediate price comparison and recommendation of images similar to those infringed—have large positive effects. Our results highlight the importance of mitigating user costs in small-value transactions. |
| Keywords: | intellectual property, digital piracy, copyright, field experiment |
| JEL: | O3 O33 O34 C9 C93 |
| Date: | 2018–12–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:boc:bocoec:971&r=all |
| By: | Stéphane Ganassali (IREGE - Institut de Recherche en Gestion et en Economie - USMB [Université de Savoie] [Université de Chambéry] - Université Savoie Mont Blanc) |
| Abstract: | The purpose of the research is to identify different consumption styles based on a large collection of letters to Santa written by some children and/or their families and submitted to the French Post website (La Poste). One of our main interests focuses on the presence and weight of brands and licenses in children's wish lists. We have had access to all the anonymous posts sent to Santa Claus through La Poste's website during the 2013 and 2014 Christmas holidays. We analyzed the nature of the wish lists as shown in the 43,000‐post database using several textual data analysis techniques. Extensive heterogeneity was found among children's and families' postures regarding that specific ritual. The different types of emails reflect the meaning families associate with Christmas time but also their different consumption styles or attitudes toward consumption: reasoned, educational, hedonistic, or materialistic, for example. When focusing on brands and licenses, we can also observe significant differences in the way families and children include them in their consumption decisions. Brands could have a very different weight in Christmas wish lists and their natures reflect different value transmission modes. The French market for Christmas children brands is rather stable and focuses on a few top leading global brands such as Playmobil, Barbie, or Lego. At least one of the ten leading brands is mentioned in half of evaluated Christmas wish lists. The analysis confirms that brands are very clearly gendered and associated with the children's ages. Peak time for brand desire is alleged to be reached between the age of 7 and 9. To our knowledge, our research is the first to analyze a large sample of spontaneous data to capture children's consumption styles and attitudes toward brands. Because of our classification, a first typology of parental consumption styles has also been identified. |
| Keywords: | Santa,children’s consumption,gifts,Consumer Generated Content,textual data analysis |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01959210&r=all |
| By: | Rusche, Christian; Scheufen, Marc |
| Abstract: | The significance of data as an economic good in the digital economy quickly raises the question of who owns the data. More specifically, within the context of a data marketplace in which data is being exchanged or traded and where different bundles of rights (property rights) are trans-ferred (contract law) - an answer regarding the genuine assignment of property rights for data seems important. From an economic standpoint, this paper investigates the need for an (new) intellectual prop-erty right for data. Firstly, an overview of the status quo of the literature on property rights for data will be provided. This will be followed by an analysis of the characteristics of data as a good, clarifying the circumstances under which a market failure can occur. Accordingly, only a market failure situation will authorise economic policy intervention. Lastly, we will derive specific policy implications, offering economic reasoning on a new intellectual property right for data and spe-cifically pointing to other forms of law that may be more applicable for reaching an efficient allocation of data resources. |
| JEL: | D23 K11 K12 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:iwkrep:482018&r=all |