Piracy and limited liability

This paper analyzes the effects of end-user piracy on a monopolized software industry with network effects in which consumers have heterogeneous income and limited liability. Limited liability produces a piracy cost which increases with income. The monopolist thus may be able to exploit the network effect brought about by the piracy of low-income consumers to charge a higher price to high-income consumers thereby earn a higher profit, especially when the monopolist can prevent the network effect from spilling over to the high-income consumers. If intellectual property rights policies are severe enough, then the monopolist can avoid the spillover. Otherwise it may become a case where each high-income buyer benefits from the piracy but the monopolist is hurt. However, a severe policy may bring about a high piracy rate since it invites the monopolist to raise the price.      

Influences on software piracy: Evidence from the various United States

Examining socio-economic influences on software piracy in the United States, we find a negative relationship between software piracy and income, tax burdens, and economic freedom. A 1% increase in per-capita income correlates with a 0.25% reduction in piracy.     

The impact of software piracy on inclusive human development: evidence from Africa

The study examines the effect of software piracy on inclusive human development in 11 African countries for which software piracy data is available for the period 2000–2010. The empirical evidence is based on instrumental variable panel Fixed Effects (FE) and Tobit models in order to control for the unobserved heterogeneity and limited range in the dependent variable. The modeling exercise is based on the inequality adjusted human development (IHDI) and its constituents. The following main findings are established. First, from the FE regressions, software piracy consistently improves the IHDI and its constituents. Within this framework, the positive relationship between inclusive human development and software piracy is driven by all its constituents. Second, for Tobit regressions, the positive relationship between software piracy and inclusive human development is confirmed exclusively in IHDI and literacy specifications. Within the latter framework, the positive relationship between software piracy and inclusive human is driven fundamentally by the literacy rate. Policy implications are discussed.     

Piracy in a two-sided software market

This paper studies the impact of software piracy in a two-sided-market setting. Software platforms attract developers and users to maximize their profits. The equilibrium price structure is affected by piracy: license fees to developers are higher with more software protection but the impact on user prices is ambiguous. A conflict between platforms and software developers over software protection may arise: whereas one side benefits from better protection, the other party loses out. Under platform compatibility, this conflict is no longer present.     

关于我国反软件盗版的思考

反软件盗版是全球性的难题,即使是对知识产权保护较好的美国也仍然存在软件盗版的问题.我国软件盗版的现象也普遍存在.我国政府对软件盗版问题十分重视,制订了相关的法律与法规,正着手全面解决软件盗版问题.首先,介绍了全球软件盗版现象,分析了软件盗版的危害,对我国软件保护条件进行了研究,指出我国软件要进行分类保护;其次,论述了反软件盗版与保护幼稚工业的关系,指出了反软件盗版需要建立在保护幼稚工业的基础之上;第三,论述了反软件盗版应与反软件垄断、反软件暴利相结合;最后,对我国反软件盗版作了总结.     

The Trade Consequences of Maritime Insecurity: Evidence from Somali Piracy

In the past decade (2000–2010), pirates from Somalia have carried out thousands of attacks on cargo ships sailing through the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, causing what others have identified as significant damage to maritime trade. In this paper, we use variations in the spread and intensity of Somali piracy to estimate its effect on the volume of international trade. By comparing trade volume changes along shipping routes located in pirate waters to those that are not, we estimate that Somali piracy reduced bulk commodities trade passing through the Gulf of Aden by 4.1% per year from 2000 to 2010. We find smaller reductions in total trade, consistent with the fact that not all goods are shipped by sea or are targets of pirate attacks. While our estimates suggest that the trade costs of piracy are much lower than what has been suggested in the existing literature, we find that they remain significant and unevenly distributed, with five countries and the EU shouldering 70% of the total costs.     

The origins of terrorism: Cross-country estimates of socio-economic determinants of terrorism

Prior research has concluded that socio-economic development does not significantly affect terrorism. We take an alternative view. First, we note that a country's socio-economic circumstances affect terrorists' behavior through terrorism's opportunity costs. We argue that this reasoning also holds for the case of supreme value terrorism. Then, we run a series of negative binomial regressions for 110 countries between 1971 and 2007 to test the hypothesis that poor socio-economic development is conducive to terrorism. We find that socio-economic variables indeed matter to terrorism, contrary to other results. Our findings imply that countries can benefit from economic development and growth in terms of a reduction in terrorism.     

假冒生产对专利制度的伤害

本文是对中国年轻的专利制度的经济学分析。通过一个包含假冒生产行为的理论模型和相应的计量检验 ,我们研究了中国普遍存在的假冒生产活动对专利保护的影响 ,并得出结论 :中国 1 993年以延长专利保护时间为主的专利法修改未使地区专利申请和研究开发投入的倾向上升 ,反而有所下降 ,原因在于专利保护时间的延长刺激了更多的假冒企业进入那些具有较大假冒潜力的行业 ,从而专利开发企业的利益受到了损害 ,也就没有动力进行进一步的研究开发和专利申请。对一切行业实行相同的专利保护期T与相同的惩罚假冒力度K ,必定违反最优专利制度设计原则。应该针对不同行业的假冒生产特点 ,通过制定相应的法律政策使假冒潜力最大的行业假冒成本提高。另外 ,就当前关于计算机软件保护的争论 ,本文认为软件行业过去保护不足。     

Monetary union in Latin America: an assessment in the context of optimum currency area

The article applies the optimum currency area (OCA) theory to Latin America to assess the potential of a monetary union in Latin America and in its major existing regional trade agreements (RTAs). According to OCA criteria we find that Latin America is far from being an optimum currency area, as its countries’ exposure to asymmetric shocks is high and their capacities to adjust in response to macroeconomic disturbances are limited. Using a panel of 20 Latin American countries from 1990 to 2014, we apply the dynamic OLS estimation techniques to estimate the costs and benefits of a potential monetary union in Latin America and in its various RTAs. to estimate the costs and benefits of a potential monetary union in Latin America and in its various RTAs. We find that the costs are high, because Latin America’s economies are vulnerable to severe macroeconomic disturbances and its RTAs differ significantly in their response to negative demand shocks. Most of the monetary efficiency gains are shown to be the result of a common restrictive monetary policy which would result in higher FDI inflows and, to a more limited extent, increased GDP, both overall and per capita. Although Central American countries are shown to be most suitable for further monetary integration, we conclude that Latin American countries should head first towards greater economic and political integration.     

Industry-level emission trading between power producers in the EU

This paper investigates how restrictions for emission trading to the energy-intensive power sector will affect the magnitude and distribution of abatement costs across EU countries vis-à-vis a comprehensive EU emission trading regime. It is found that emission trading between European power sectors allows the harvest of a major part of the efficiency gains provided by full trade as compared to strictly domestic action. However, trade restrictions may create a more unequal distribution of abatement costs across member states than is the case for a comprehensive trade regime. The reason for this is that restricted permit trade enhances secondary terms-of-trade benefits to EU member countries with low marginal abatement costs at the expense of the other EU member states.     

On the sufficiency of regulatory enforcement in combating piracy

The literature on piracy has questioned the role of regulatory enforcement in the form of monitoring in deterring piracy. This article shows that for a wide range of penalty levels the equilibrium monitoring rate is such that it is optimal for the copyright holder to prevent piracy by expanding his output beyond the monopoly output level rather than producing the monopoly output level and investing in an anticopying technology. This result holds even when the monitoring cost is “sufficiently” high relative to the cost of investing in anti-copying technology.     

交易成本：软件盗版的一个经济学注释

盗版软件影响软件市场的发展,长期以来却屡禁不绝。从产权经济学上分析,软件是具有公共性的商品。矫正软件公共性所导致的交易成本过高,被认为是盗版问题的主要经济学根源,造成了在打击盗版方面执法效果不佳。只有关注交易成本的影响,才能更加合理有效的对软件产权进行保护。     

Multinational firms' global strategies,host country indigenisation of ownership and welfare

This paper examines the costs and benefits that may arise when host countries aim to indigenise the ownership of foreign subsidiaries. It is shown that there may be an optimal level of indigenisation beyond which the marginal social costs of such policies will exceed the corresponding benefits. The analysis also shows that the optimum indigenisation may depend, among other things, on whether the subsidiary is autonomous or fully controlled by the parent company. A further result is that if the subsidiaries' equity is purchased by private firms or individuals, the privately optimum level of indigenisation is likely to be greater than the socially optimum.     

Fixed exchange rates with escape clauses: The political determinants of the European Monetary System realignments

This paper studies the political economy of realignments to fixed exchange rates and suggests that the use of realignments is less likely when there are political benefits from stable exchange rates and when linkages across other issue areas increase the costs of realignment. More specifically for the case of the European Monetary System (EMS), the expectation is that realignments are related to partisanship, support for the broader European integration, trade integration, resource transfers from the European Community, as well as countries reacting to the political and economic costs of realignment in other EMS members. Hypotheses are tested using binomial logit models on monthly data on exchange rate realignments for all EMS countries from 1979 to 1993. I find lower realignment risk for left wing policy-makers and countries with more trade links to Germany, whereas more intra-European Community resource transfers appear to go to countries facing higher realignment risk. Also, realignments are less likely when the rest of EMS member countries have stable international reserves and their governments are pro-European.     

An analysis of differing abatement incentives

In general, climate policies are evaluated with respect to their costs and benefits. But regularly an important category of benefits is omitted: ancillary or secondary benefits. In contrast to the main strand of literature on climate change the study presented here will analyze countries’ decisions on greenhouse gas abatement in an impure public good model which considers ancillary benefits. As can be shown by integrating ancillary benefits into the analysis, environmental regulations independent of the climate problem may well have an effect on countries’ greenhouse gas control. Consequently, different environmental programs should be coordinated carefully and should not be considered as being independent.     

A limited revolution — The distributional consequences of Open Source Software in North America

Open Source Software (OSS) has become an important alternative method of organizing the production of software and has gained in popularity and use because of its benefits and costs relative to the dominant proprietary software model. In this paper, I use evidence from the United States and Canada to examine the distribution of these benefits and costs. I argue that although the rhetoric surrounding OSS is supported empirically, the benefits of OSS have been limited because of the way this technological project has evolved within its associated policy environment. That is, although ostensibly neutral, the policies and laws of both the U.S. and Canadian governments have tended to be positioned implicitly against the use of OSS both in the public sector and in the economy generally. In addition, OSS use and development requires a set of skills that are absent in many instances or create prohibitively high costs. Thus OSS is typically used by larger organizations, and its development is restricted to a mostly male, highly educated, high-income group of contributors. Therefore while the benefits of OSS are real, the distribution of these benefits is skewed.     

Macroeconomic determinants of remittances: evidence from Romania

Given the globalization of the labour market and the promotion of free movement for work, young people are looking for employment opportunities from at least two perspectives – professional careers and socio-economic benefits from employment. In developing countries, such as Romania, the labour market is less attractive, which has led to profound, numerical and structural imbalances, due to external mobility for work. Both new generations of graduates and young people aged up to 40 years, decide to work abroad as a more beneficial individual solution, i.e. remittances. The purpose of this paper is to examine the macroeconomic determinants of remittances to Romania, in order to substantiate public policies on diaspora, to adjust employment policy on the national labour market by promoting incentives to create decent, youth-friendly jobs. Using panel data model we selected several variables with potential influence on remittances level. The results demonstrate that traditional influence’s factors as distance, migration routes diaspora concentration or unemployment rate are, at present, less important than wage gap or tax rate at least for developing origin countries.     

How Costly is Modern Maritime Piracy to the International Community?

This paper focuses on the impact of maritime piracy on international trade. Piracy increases the cost of international maritime transport through an increase in insecurity regarding goods deliveries. Bilateral trade flows between the main European and Asian countries over the 1999 to 2008 period are used to estimate an augmented gravity model that includes various measures of piracy acts. We found robust evidence indicating that maritime piracy reduces the volume of trade; the effect of 10 additional vessels hijacked being associated to an 11% decrease in exports. Consequently, the current cost of piracy in terms of international trade destruction is estimated at 24.5 billion dollars.     

Climate-change adaptation: The role of fiscal policy

Climate change and natural disasters have important consequences on fiscal sustainability, especially for developing countries with limited financial resources and underdeveloped institutions. The paper contributes to shed light on the role of fiscal policy in climate-change adaptation, which aims at containing the economic damage of climate change. We use an overlapping generations (OLG) model for a small open economy in which adaptation reflects the extent to which public policies reduce the negative influence of climate change on the capital depreciation rate. Adaptation includes both preventive measures, i.e. investment in infrastructure, and remedial measures, i.e. post-disaster relief and reconstruction. Through model simulations we assess the costs and benefits of both remedial and preventive actions. We find that preventive intervention leads to higher GDP growth rates than either taking no action or waiting until remedial action is necessary. However, the evidence shows that, due to high costs of early adaptation and budgetary constraints, countries tend to focus on late corrective actions, also relying on international assistance. Given the expected increase in climate-related risks, a comprehensive strategy including both preventive and corrective actions would be desirable to strengthen resilience to shocks and alleviate the financial constraints, which particularly affect small countries.     

The consumption benefits of investment in infrastructure: The evaluation of sites-and-services programs in underdeveloped countries

The justifications for housing subsidy programs in developing countries often rely upon substantial indirect benefits accruing to program participants (in the form of improved health, earning capacity or employment, or non-market activity). The empirical analysis in this paper suggests that such programs may often be justified solely on the basis of direct impacts. The paper presents a methodology for deriving rigorously the direct Hicksian benefits of housing subsidy programs such as ‘sites-and-services’ and ‘slum upgrading’ projects in developing countries. The methodology is used to evaluate the net benefits of a sites and services project typical of recent urban shelter programs sponsored by the World Bank. The results suggest that the direct benefits of such programs may be substantial. In the particular case analyzed, the rate of return approaches 40 percent.