IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/vir/virpap/368.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Economics of Ideas and the Ideas of Economists

Author

Listed:
  • William R. Johnson

Abstract

On college campuses across the country and on millions of home computers, too, young adults download from each other digital files containing recorded music and films for their entertainment. The owners of that copyrighted material pursue the downloaders with legal action as well as the software services that facilitate it. Napster’s existence as a free file-sharing internet site was shut down in 2001, and the Supreme Court has recently ruled that a successor file-sharing service, Grokster, engaged in copyright infringement by providing an easy way for individuals to exchange files. The amount of filesharing activity is not trivial; Paul Romer (2002) estimates that Napster users were downloading at the rate of 1.5 billion downloads per month before Napster was shut down and that the consumer surplus generated by downloading roughly equaled the revenues of the recording industry.

Suggested Citation

  • William R. Johnson, 2005. "The Economics of Ideas and the Ideas of Economists," Virginia Economics Online Papers 368, University of Virginia, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:vir:virpap:368
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.as.virginia.edu/RePEc/vir/virpap/papers/virpap368.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kremer, Michael R., 1998. "Patent Buyouts: A Mechanism for Encouraging Innovation," Scholarly Articles 3693705, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    2. Shavell, Steven & van Ypersele, Tanguy, 2001. "Rewards versus Intellectual Property Rights," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(2), pages 525-547, October.
    3. William R. Johnson, 2005. "Creative Pricing In Markets For Intellectual Property," Virginia Economics Online Papers 369, University of Virginia, Department of Economics.
    4. Connolly, Marie & Krueger, Alan B., 2006. "Rockonomics: The Economics of Popular Music," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 20, pages 667-719, Elsevier.
    5. Michele Boldrin & David K Levine, 2005. "Intellectual Property and the Efficient Allocation of Surplus from Creation," Levine's Working Paper Archive 618897000000000925, David K. Levine.
    6. Michele Boldrin & David Levine, 2002. "The Case Against Intellectual Property," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 209-212, May.
    7. B. Zorina Khan & Kenneth L. Sokoloff, 2001. "The Early Development of Intellectual Property Institutions in the United States," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 233-246, Summer.
    8. Johnson, William R, 1985. "The Economics of Copying," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(1), pages 158-174, February.
    9. Fiona Murray & Scott Stern, 2005. "Do Formal Intellectual Property Rights Hinder the Free Flow of Scientific Knowledge? An Empirical Test of the Anti-Commons Hypothesis," NBER Working Papers 11465, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Michael Kremer, 1998. "Patent Buyouts: A Mechanism for Encouraging Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(4), pages 1137-1167.
    11. Robert W. Fogel, 1999. "Catching Up with the Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 1-21, March.
    12. Marie Connolly & Alan Krueger, 2005. "Rockonomics: The Economics of Popular Music," Working Papers 878, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    13. Paul Romer, 2002. "When Should We Use Intellectual Property Rights?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 213-216, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Werner Hölzl, 2007. "Intellectual Property Rights, Innovation and European IPR Policy," Austrian Economic Quarterly, WIFO, vol. 12(1), pages 71-82, May.
    2. Stan J. Liebowitz & Richard Watt, 2006. "How To Best Ensure Remuneration For Creators In The Market For Music? Copyright And Its Alternatives," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(4), pages 513-545, September.
    3. Kim Jin-Hyuk, 2007. "Strategic Use of Copyright Protection to Deter Entry," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-19, September.
    4. Pardey, Philip G. & James, Jennifer S. & Alston, Julian M. & Wood, Stanley & Koo, Bonwoo & Binenbaum, Eran & Hurley, Terrance M. & Glewwe, Paul & Mayer, Jorge & Jones, Richard & De Groote, Hugo & Kana, 2007. "Science, Technology and Skills," Reports 136256, University of Minnesota, International Science and Technology Practice and Policy.
    5. Wright, Brian D. & Pardey, Philip G. & Nottenburg, Carol & Koo, Bonwoo, 2007. "Agricultural Innovation: Investments and Incentives," Handbook of Agricultural Economics, in: Robert Evenson & Prabhu Pingali (ed.), Handbook of Agricultural Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 48, pages 2533-2603, Elsevier.
    6. Davidson, Sinclair & Mohan, Vijay & Potts, Jason, 2020. "Location, taxation and governments: An exchange theory of intellectual property," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 266-283.
    7. Liotard, Isabelle & Revest, Valérie, 2018. "Contests as innovation policy instruments: Lessons from the US federal agencies' experience," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 57-69.
    8. Josh Lerner, 2002. "150 Years of Patent Protection," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 221-225, May.
    9. Galasso, Alberto & Mitchell, Matthew & Virag, Gabor, 2018. "A theory of grand innovation prizes," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 343-362.
    10. Neves, Pedro Cunha & Afonso, Oscar & Silva, Diana & Sochirca, Elena, 2021. "The link between intellectual property rights, innovation, and growth: A meta-analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 196-209.
    11. Le, Son & Sukhatme, Neel U., 2020. "Reaching for mediocrity: Competition and stagnation in pharmaceutical innovation," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    12. David Rietzke & Yu Chen, 2020. "Push or pull? Performance‐pay, incentives, and information," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(1), pages 301-317, March.
    13. Newell, Richard G. & Wilson, Nathan E., 2005. "Technology Prizes for Climate Change Mitigation," Discussion Papers 10698, Resources for the Future.
    14. Nancy Gallini & Suzanne Scotchmer, 2002. "Intellectual Property: When Is It the Best Incentive System?," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 2, pages 51-78, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Lin, Hwan C., 2016. "The switch from patents to state-dependent prizes for technological innovation," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 193-223.
    16. Chari, V.V. & Golosov, Mikhail & Tsyvinski, Aleh, 2012. "Prizes and patents: Using market signals to provide incentives for innovations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 781-801.
    17. repec:pra:mprapa:52608 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Onur Bayar & Thomas J. Chemmanur & Mark H. Liu, "undated". "How to Motivate Fundamental Innovation: Subsidies versus Prizes and the Role of Venture Capital," Working Papers 0175fin, College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio, revised 06 Jan 2016.
    19. Galasso, Alberto & Mitchell, Matthew & Virag, Gabor, 2016. "Market outcomes and dynamic patent buyouts," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 207-243.
    20. Michael Kremer, 2001. "Creating Markets for New Vaccines - Part I: Rationale," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 1, pages 35-72, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Hugo Hopenhayn & Gerard Llobet & Matthew Mitchell, 2006. "Rewarding Sequential Innovators: Prizes, Patents, and Buyouts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(6), pages 1041-1068, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intellectual Property; property rights; creativity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
    • O38 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Government Policy
    • Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:vir:virpap:368. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Debby Stanford (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.virginia.edu/economics/home.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.