how to best ensure remuneration for creators in the market for music copyright and its alternatives the focus of this essay is to examine the market for copyrighted works with a particular emphasis on the sound recording market this market is currently in a state of flux some would say disarray due to the ability of the internet to lower transmission costs for both authorized and unauthorized copies with the latter being at this time far more prevalent in this essay we discuss the intent of copyright the role of copying and file sharing and some alternative production consumption schemes meant to strengthen or to replace copyright

effects of piracy on quality of information goods it is commonly believed that piracy of information goods leads to lower profits which translate to lower incentives to invest in innovation and eventually to lower quality products manufacturers policy makers and researchers all claim that inadequate piracy enforcement efforts translate to lower investments in product development however we find many practical examples that contradict this claim therefore to examine this claim more carefully we develop a rigorous economic model of the manufacturer s quality decision problem in the presence of piracy we consider a monopolist who does not have any marginal costs but has a product development cost quadratic in the quality level produced the monopolist faces a consumer market heterogeneous in its preference for quality and offers a quality level that maximizes its profit we also allow for the possibility that the manufacturer may use versioning to counter piracy we unexpectedly find that in certain situations lower piracy enforcement increases the monopolist s incentive to invest in quality we explain the reasons and welfare implications of our findings this paper was accepted by lorin hitt information systems

change in co2 emission and its transmissions between korea and japan using international input output analysis abstract this paper is intended to analyze co 2 transmission between japan and south korea through international trade based on 1990 and 1995 international input output data it applied a residual free structural decomposition method proposed by chung and rhee chung h s rhee h c 2001 a residual free decomposition of the sources of carbon dioxide emissions a case of the korean industries energy 26 1 15 30 to emission related international input output analysis for the first time in the decomposition studies this paper is a case study regarding the manner and the extent to which co 2 emissions are influenced by international trade between japan an annex i country and south korea a non annex i country which is of particular interest for the carbon leakage issue in this paper we attempted to show which factors contributed to the changes in emission of the major greenhouse gas in south korea and japan the changes in emission are analyzed in terms of emission intensity input techniques demand composition and trade structures according to our analysis south korea a non annex i country has more energy intensive production structures than japan an annex i country south korea s trade pattern with japan reflects these production features resulting in the korea s comparative advantage in emission intensive products though the degree has somewhat mitigated in 1995 compared to 1990

optimal timing of sequential distribution the impact of congestion externalities and day and date strategies the window between a film s theatrical and video releases has been steadily declining with some studios now testing day and date strategies i e when a film is released across multiple channels at once we present a model of consumer choice that examines trade offs between substitutable products theatrical and video forms the possibility of purchasing both alternatives a congestion externality affecting consumption at theaters with heterogeneous consumer groups and a decay in the quality of the content over time our model permits a normative study of the impact of shorter release windows zero three months for which there is a scarcity of relevant data we characterize the market conditions under which a studio makes video release time and price selections indicative of direct to video day and date and delayed video release tactics during seasons of peak congestion we establish that day and date strategies are optimal for high quality films with high content durability i e films whose content tends to lead consumers to purchase both alternatives whereas prices are set to perfectly segment the consumer market for films with low content durability we find that lower congestion effects provide studios with incentives to delay release and price the video to induce multiple purchasing behavior for films with higher content durability however an increase in congestion effects can in certain cases actually lead to higher studio profitability we also show that at the lower range of quality an increase in movie quality should often be accompanied by a later video release time surprisingly however we observe the opposite result at the upper range of movie quality an increase in quality can justify an earlier release of the video

identifying the warm glow effect in contingent valuation abstract this paper reports the results from a contingent valuation study designed to investigate the influence of warm glow in willingness to pay wtp responses interindividual differences in warm glow motivation are measured through a factor analysis performed on a list of attitudinal items the reported wtp measures fail to pass the scope test both socioeconomic variables and motivational factor scores are significant in the explanation of the individual wtp measures we compute cold wtp measures by taking out the effect of the warm glow motivation these cold measures satisfy both the scope test and hausman s adding up property

digital content provision and optimal copyright protection advances in digital technologies have led to an increasing concern about piracy for providers of digital content e g e books games music software videos yet controversies exist over the influence of copyright protection on firm profitability the objective of this paper is to provide an alternative rationale for the growing anti protection trend and to investigate optimal copyright enforcement and quality provision in a monopoly setting the proposed economic mechanism centers on the influence of copyright protection on consumer search when consumers can get to know the firm s actions e g price quality only after costly search we show that more stringent copyright protection can induce the consumers to rationally expect lower ex post surplus thus exerting a negative strategic effect on the consumers willingness to search this strategic effect may outweigh the positive main effect on the relative attractiveness of the authorized versus the pirated product which can hence explain the opti

software piracy an analysis of protection strategies software piracy by users is generally believed to harm both software firms through lower profits and buying customers through higher prices thus it is thought that perfect and costless technological protection would benefit both firms and consumers the model developed here suggests that in some circumstances even with significant piracy not protecting can be the best policy both raising firm profits and lowering selling prices key to the analysis is joining the presence of a positive network externality with the fact that piracy increases the total number of program users the network externality exists because consumers have an incentive to economize on post purchase learning and customization costs

implications of basing health care resource allocations on cost utility analysis in the presence of externalities abstract cost utility analysis is increasingly being advocated as a tool for helping to establish funding priorities among programs and services in the health care sector as currently conducted however cost utility analysis is problematic as a basis for achieving allocative efficiency because it excludes externalities the exclusion of externalities may bias program ranking in unpredictable ways leading to a non optimal allocation of resources consideration of externalities also raises a number of distributional issues for the evaluation of health services and highlights the importance of developing economic evaluation methods that are consistent with the conceptual basis for allocating resources

co2 embodiment in china australia trade the drivers and implications abstract this study focuses on co 2 emissions embodied in the characteristic china australia bilateral trade which refer to the co 2 emissions due to the production of goods traded between the two countries we perform an assessment of the co 2 embodiment in the trade during the period between 2002 and 2010 we find that the scale effect has been a dominant effect contributing to an increase of co 2 emissions embodied in the bilateral trade through the years while the composition effect seems to be a major driver for reducing co 2 embodiment in the exports of australia to china based on an analysis of the difference between the amounts of actual co 2 embodiment and those in a hypothetical no trade scenario we estimate that the net co 2 emissions due to the bilateral trade declined from around 10 mt of co 2 emissions in 2002 to 10 mt in 2010 that is the bilateral trade contributed to a reduction of the global carbon emissions in the recent years this finding suggests that the rapid growth of exports of carbon intensive goods from australia to china has helped in reducing carbon emissions globally because carbon intensity factors of those goods are much lower in australia than those in china

an analysis of the driving forces of co2 emissions embodied in japan china trade abstract by using the latest china japan input output data sets and the index decomposition analysis ida approach this article analyzes the driving forces of co2 emissions embodied in trade between the two countries during 1990 2000 we found that the growth of trade volume had a large influence on the increase of co2 emissions embodiments in bilateral trade the dramatic decline in carbon intensity of the chinese economy is a primary cause in offsetting co2 emissions exported from china to japan over 1995 2000 we argue that a better understanding of the factors affecting co2 emissions embodied in international trade will assist in seeking more effective climate policies with wider participation in the post kyoto regime

responsibility and trade emission balances an evaluation of approaches this paper compares two concepts to evaluate the international responsibility of a country with respect to its emissions using a multi regional input output model we show that the trade emission balance and the responsibility emission balance yield the same result in practical work however a lack of data availability implies that the same technology assumption has been commonly adopted in that case also a third alternative exists which simply evaluates the emissions embodied in the trade balance of the country this third alternative yields the same results as the other two approaches at the aggregate level at the level of individual products however the results are clearly different and it turns out that the third alternative answers a different question that is it is appropriate for measuring the emission content of the products that cross the border in our empirical application we consider spain in 1995 and 2000 distinguishing nine different gases co 2 ch 4 n 2 o sf 6 hfcs pfcs so 2 nox and nh 3 c 2010 elsevier b v all rights reserved

economic and policy implications of restricted patch distribution in this paper we study how restricting the availability of patches to legal users impacts the vendor s profits market share software maintenance decisions and welfare outcomes prior work on this topic assumes that the hacker s effort is independent of the vendor s decision to release the patch freely or not clearly if the patch is not available to everyone the hacker finds it easier to exploit the vulnerability in the product and as a result is likely to alter his effort to understand the role of a strategic hacker we build a game theoretic model where the hacker s decision is endogenous with this model we find that the hacker s effort may on the one hand decrease the utility that the vendor can extract from the consumers but on the other hand may help differentiate the legal version of the product from the pirated version a vendor can strategically exploit the hacker s behavior in its pricing and software maintenance decisions the endogeneity of the hacker s actions drives several of

an introduction to the law and economics of intellectual property although economists have written on topics of intellectual property for a long time the impact of economics on public policy in this area has been slight especially as compared to the influence of professional writings in areas such as antitrust and taxation we believe that too few of the profession s resources have been devoted to these issues and that of those resources that have been employed too few have been devoted to empirical analyses we hope that this introductory essay and the three papers that follow will stimulate interest in this subject this introductory essay first describes some of the basic economic tradeoffs involved in intellectual property law and then describes the framework of the law in the six areas described above patent copyright semiconductor protection trademark trade secret and misappropriation it is intended both to provide thumbnail descriptions of the various intellectual property regimes to economists working in this area and to indicate where additional economic research might be useful

installed base and compatibility innovation product preannouncements and predation a good is often more valuable to any user the more others use compatible goods the authors show that this effect may inhibit innovation if an installed base exists and transition to a new standard must be gradual early adopters bear a disproportionate share of transient incompatibility costs this can produce excess inertia the installed base however is stranded if the new standard is adopted this may create excess momentum these dynamic effects have strategic implications temporary price cutting can permanently prevent entry and product preannouncements can be critical in innovation these strategic actions have ambiguous welfare effects

software piracy a strategic analysis and policy instruments abstract we examine the government s role in restricting commercial piracy in a software market welfare maximization may or may not result in monitoring as the socially optimal outcome correspondingly either monopoly situation or market sharing between an original firm and a pirate are subgame perfect equilibria if it is profitable for a monopolist to prevent piracy by installing a protective device then not monitoring is the equilibrium we also discuss the effects of network externalities in addition to deriving the effects of changes in the reliability of the pirated software and network benefits on the policy variables the extent of piracy and the monopolist s incentive to prevent piracy

analysis of protection and pricing strategies for digital products under uncertain demand abstract we analyze pricing and protection digital rights management strategies in a two echelon supply chain that consists of a manufacturer and a retailer of digital products the demand for the legal non pirated product which depends on both price and monetary investment in protection is assumed to be uncertain three different supply chain models are analyzed manufacturer stackelberg retailer stackelberg and vertical integration we show that the retailer s utility function has no effect on the equilibrium strategies and suggest schemes to find these strategies for any utility function of the manufacturer further results are obtained under assumptions of either a multiplicative or an additive demand model we study the players strategies under different profit criteria reflecting different attitudes toward risk specifically the expectation criterion and the target criterion and for each criterion we obtain the dependence between the pricing and the protection investment we show that there are situations in which the manufacturer can increase his profit by giving up his leadership to the retailer even if the power balance is in his favor

health related externalities evidence from a choice experiment health related external benefits are of potentially large importance for public policy this paper investigates health related external benefits using a stated preference discrete choice experiment framed in a health care context and including choice scenarios defined by six attributes related to a recipient and the recipient s condition communicability severity medical necessity relationship to respondent location and amount of contribution requested subjects also completed a set of own treatment scenarios and a values orientation instrument we find evidence of substantial health related external benefits that vary as expected with the scenario attributes and subjects value orientations the results are consistent with a number of hypotheses offered by the general theoretical analysis of health related externalities and the analysis of externalities specific to health care

digital piracy a competitive analysis in recent years the issue of copyright protection for intellectual properties such as computer software music cds and videos has become increasingly important it is often claimed that illegal copying of intellectual property costs companies billions of dollars in lost revenues and reduces firms incentives to innovate some researchers have shown that copying can be beneficial to firms when there are strong network effects and copying expands the market in this paper we first examine the impact of illegal copying of software and other similar intellectual properties on firms prices profits and quality choices even when there are no network effects and the market is saturated we show that contrary to the claims of manufacturers there are conditions under which copying can increase firms profits lead to better quality products and increase social welfare this is because weaker copyright protection enables firms to reduce price competition by allowing price sensitive consumers to copy thus weaker copyright protection can serve as a coordination device to reduce price competition we also examine how equilibrium copyright enforcement is affected by network externalities in contrast to previous research we show that strong network effects can sometimes lead to a firm choosing higher levels of copyright protection our results show that in the presence of strong network effects stronger copyright enforcement by one firm can serve as a coordinating device to reduce price competition

supply side structural effect on carbon emissions in china abstract this paper carries out a structural decomposition analysis sda of production related carbon emissions in china from 1992 to 2005 by adopting the ghosh input output model it finds that the supply side structure measured by sectoral shares in value added increased production related carbon emissions in 1992 2002 mainly due to the rapid growth of manufacturing sectors but reduced them in 2002 2005 thanks to the decreased shares of carbon intensive sectors whatever the supply side structure forward carbon multipliers of each sector or changes in supply side sectoral shares and related emissions effects calculated by adopting the ghosh input output model were different from their demand side counterparts estimated by adopting the leontief input output model the results suggest optimizing the supply side structure and lowering the forward carbon multipliers to control carbon emissions in the future

the monetary compensation mechanism an alternative to the clean development mechanism abstract one of the key challenges in resolving global warming problem is how to induce developing countries to reduce emissions the cdm was proposed in the kyoto protocol as a means of obtaining the cooperation of developing countries in controlling greenhouse gases but it has some intrinsic problems and has generated considerable controversy this paper presents an alternative mechanism the monetary compensation mechanism mcm i study the characteristics of this mechanism with a dynamic principal agent model by solving the model numerically i obtain the optimal solution for a scenario based on 1990 data the monetary compensation rate under the mcm is comparable to the price of cers in the cdm but the mcm has several advantages over the cdm

commercial piracy and intellectual property policy abstract i discuss the competition between a copyright owner and several commercial pirates who sell copies of the same information good to consumers i view the increased risk of a punishment that offering a pirate copy to a consumer causes as an advertising cost whose value is chosen by the government the structure of the market for pirate copies is affected also by fixed costs that are caused by punishments or drm systems i present a systematic analysis of the effects of these policy variables and the quality of pirate copies on the market for the considered information good

the intertemporal consequences of unauthorized reproduction of intellectual property in an intertemporal framework the harm to firms from unauthorized reproduction of their products may be significantly greater than that predicted by most static models copying by some consumers reduces the appropriable surplus from all consumers including those consumers lacking any propensity to copy somewhat paradoxically however the commitment value of copies may also imply that profits are higher with copying than without copying it is therefore suggested that firms may prefer differential copyright enforcement and that the commitment value of copies may offer a strategic explanation for free giveaways of abridged versions of intellectual property and vertical product differentiation more generally

are choice experiments incentive compatible a test with quality differentiated beef steaks this study compares hypothetical and nonhypothetical responses to choice experiment questions we test for hypothetical bias in a choice experiment involving beef ribeye steaks with differing quality attributes in general hypothetical responses predicted higher probabilities of purchasing beef steaks than nonhypothetical responses thus hypothetical choices overestimate total willingness to pay for beef steaks however marginal willingness to pay for a change in steak quality is in general not statistically different across hypothetical and actual payment settings

implications of spillover effects within the family for medical cost effectiveness analysis medical cost effectiveness analyses traditionally treat patients as isolated individuals and neglect the effects of improvement in patients health on the welfare of their family members we use a model based on a family utility function with altruistic linkages to show that there can be direct and indirect effects on the welfare of all family members we focus specially on a model of how the spillover effects to the spouse in a two person family might affect choice of treatments for prostate cancer we then test the predictions of this model by analyzing treatment choices of prostate cancer patients using the linked seer medicare database we find that our results are consistent with the model s predictions we conclude that cost effectiveness analyses may better reflect the full costs and benefits of medical interventions if they incorporate these family effects however concerns about equity present a dilemma for the practice of cea from the societal perspective

the effect of piracy on the market penetration of subscription software software piracy is not necessarily harmful to a software firm seeking to launch a new product when strategically managed through the use of price and protection measures piracy establishes the initial adopters of the software who in turn influence other users to buy the product we examine the role of piracy in affecting the adoption of subscription software products we present an individual level model in an adaptive population setting intended to determine the price protection mix that maximizes the discounted profit stream over the life of the software an extension for nonsubscription software is also discussed

interactions among energy consumption economic development and greenhouse gas emissions in japan after world war ii abstract the long term dynamic changes in the triad energy consumption economic development and greenhouse gas ghg emissions in japan after world war ii were quantified and the interactions among them were analyzed based on an integrated suite of energy emergy and economic indices the results quantitatively showed that two different energy strategy periods one before 1973 using new sources of higher quality energy and one after 1973 focused on improving the efficiency of energy generation methods could explain the linear increase in national economic development in japan over the 66 years from 1946 to 2011 japan benefited both ecologically and economically from importing fossil fuels which accounted for 8 7 of the nominal gdp of japan averaged over the entire study period the total environmental impacts of ghg i e co 2 ch 4 and n 2 o emissions measured by emergy decreased after 1997 and since 2009 they have remained lower than 76 of the emissions in 1990 even though no decrease in the global warming impact based on the weight of co 2 was observed emergy methods and energy systems models revealed aspects of the complicated interactions among energy consumption economic development and the potential environmental impact of ghg emissions which formerly had not been recognized

international trade and the sustainability footprint a practical criterion for its assessment a simple and minimal criterion for sustainability is that the value of natural capital plus manufactured capital be not decreasing on the basis of any individual country or region the above simple comparison may be misleading as it does not take account of the production of goods for consumption in other countries regions via international trade in other terms the full environmental footprint of a country may not be properly assessed a method of calculating a weak sustainability criterion has been established for both a closed economy approach and an open economy approach there are significant differences between the open and closed economies measures for several regions particularly the middle east overall global sustainability on this criterion has been positive and increasing using a difference equation approach a further analysis has been made of the average proportional rate of change of global sustainability between 1980 and 1990 and its various regional and structural components have been determined these indicate that most of global sustainability growth can be attributed to western europe other asia and japan particularly through high savings ratios the usa on the other hand has made a very small net contribution to the growth in global sustainability

co2 emissions from electricity generation in seven asia pacific and north american countries a decomposition analysis abstract the logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi method of complete decomposition is used to examine the role of three factors electricity production electricity generation structure and energy intensity of electricity generation affecting the evolution of co2 emissions from electricity generation in seven countries these seven countries together generated 58 of global electricity and they are responsible for more than two thirds of global co2 emissions from electricity generation in 2005 the analysis shows production effect as the major factor responsible for rise in co2 emissions during the period 1990 2005 the generation structure effect also contributed in co2 emissions increase although at a slower rate in contrary the energy intensity effect is responsible for modest reduction in co2 emissions during this period over the 2005 2030 period production effect remains the key factor responsible for increase in emissions and energy intensity effect is responsible for decrease in emissions unlike in the past generation structure effect contributes significant decrease in emissions however the degree of influence of these factors affecting changes in co2 emissions vary from country to country the analysis also shows that there is a potential of efficiency improvement of fossil fuel fired power plants and its associated co benefits among these countries

buying sharing and renting information goods information goods such as books journals computer software music and videos can be copied shared resold or rented when such opportunities for sharing are present the content producer will generally sell a smaller amount at a higher price which may increase or decrease profits i identify three circumstances where profits increase 1 when the transactions cost of sharing is less than the marginal cost of production 2 when content is viewed only a few times and transactions costs of sharing are low and 3 when a sharing market provides a way to segment high value and low value users

determinants of net carbon emissions embodied in sino german trade abstract the existing research on carbon emissions embodied in trade has been concentrated between net importing countries and net exporting countries few study has been conducted to analyze carbon emissions embodied in trade between net exporting countries to fill the research gap this work systematically investigated the net carbon emissions embodied in trade between the largest net exporter of developing countries china and the largest net exporter of developed countries german based on the non competitive input output analysis and the structural decomposition analysis was used to study the driving factors effecting the change of net embodied carbon emissions in sino german trade the results show the net carbon emissions embodied in sino german trade increased significantly with the sharp increase of net trade volume after china s accession to the world trade organization carbon transfer through trade was mainly concentrated in the carbon intensive industrial sectors in sino german trade this phenomenon was attributed to the differences in the trade structure and the production efficiency between china and germany the decomposition analysis shows china s intermediate input structure effect and the country structure effect of germany s final demand were the leading contributors to growth in net carbon emission in sino german trade which mainly was offset by china s carbon intensity effect finally some policy implications are offered

parallel imports challenges from unauthorized distribution channels we examine the problem of parallel imports unauthorized flows of products across countries which compete with authorized distribution channels the traditional economics model of a discriminating monopolist that has different prices for the same good in different markets requires the markets to be separated in some way usually geographically the profits from price discrimination can be threatened by parallel imports that allow consumers in the high priced region some access to the low priced marketplace however as this article shows there is a very real possibility that parallel imports may actually increase profits the basic intuition is that parallel importation becomes another channel for the authentic goods and creates a new product version that allows the manufacturer to price discriminate we propose a two country three stage model to quantitatively study the effects and strategies in the third stage and in the higher priced country where parallel imports have entered we characterize the resulting market segmentation one segment of consumers stays with the authorized version as they place more value on the warranty and services that come with the authorized version another segment switches to parallel imports because a lower price is offered due to lack of country specific features or warranties parallel imports also generate a third and new segment that would not have bought this product before unlike counterfeits that are fabricated by imitators all parallel imports are genuine and sourced from the manufacturer in the lower priced country through authorized dealers therefore the manufacturer s global sales quantity should increase but profit may rise or fall depending on the relative sizes and profitability of the segments a profit maximizing parallel importer should set price and quantity in the second stage after observing the manufacturer s prices in both countries there will be a threshold of across country price gap above which parallel imports would occur in the first stage the manufacturer can anticipate the possible occurrence of a parallel import its price and quantity and its effect on authorized sales in each country to make a coordinated pricing decision to maximize the global supply chain profit under some circumstances the manufacturer should allow parallel imports and under others should prevent them through a stackelberg game we solve for the optimal pricing strategy in each scenario we then find in one extension that when the number of parallel importers increases the optimal authorized price gap should narrow but the prices and quantities of parallel imports may rise or fall in another extension we nd that when the manufacturer has other means such as monitoring dealers differentiating designs and unbundling warranties to contain parallel imports the authorized price gap can widen as a function of the effectiveness of nonpricing controls in summary parallel imports may help the manufacturer to extend the global reach of its product and even boost its global profit if the manufacturer offers a discount version through its authorized dealers it is running a high risk of confusing customers and tarnishing brand images parallel imports may cause similar concerns for the manufacturer but unauthorized dealers are perceived as further removed from the manufacturer therefore there is less risk of confusing consumers when parallel imports are channeled through unauthorized dealers furthermore they are more nimble in diverting the product whenever their transshipment and marketing costs are small enough not to offset the authorized price gap and the valuation discount this may explain why some manufacturers fiercely fight parallel imports while others knowingly use this alternative channel

parental altruism and the value of avoiding acute illness are kids worth more than parents abstract a model describing parents preferences to relieve their own and their children s acute illnesses is estimated using stated preference data estimated marginal rates of substitution mrs between child and parent illness are about two indicating that parents value children s illness attributes twice as highly as their own the mrs is larger for younger children falls toward unity as the child approaches adulthood and appears to reflect parental altruism rather than parent child differences in initial health or illness costs intra family allocations may compensate for chronic health impairments parents willingness to pay to avoid own or child illness increases with income declines with fertility increases at a decreasing rate with duration and number of symptoms and depends on perceived discomfort and activity restrictions current methods of assessing morbidity benefits of environmental regulations may understate substantially the value of children s health particularly in african american families

technology adoption in the presence of network externalities we analyze technology adoption in industries where network externalities are significant the pattern of adoption depends on whether technologies are sponsored a sponsor is an entity that has property rights to the technology and hence is willing to make investments to promote it key findings include the following 1 compatibility tends to be undersupplied by the market but excessive standardization can occur 2 in the absence of sponsors the technology superior today has a strategic advantage and is likely to dominate the market 3 when one of two rival technologies is sponsored that technology has a strategic advantage and may be adopted even if it is inferior 4 when two competing technologies both are sponsored the technology that will be superior tomorrow has a strategic advantage

how do respondents process stated choice experiments attribute consideration under varying information load the popularity of stated choice sc experiments has produced many design strategies in which researchers use increasingly more complex choice settings to study choice behaviour when the amount of information to assess increases we wonder how an individual handles such information in making a choice defining the amount of information as the number of attributes associated with each choice set we investigate how this information is processed as we vary its complexity four ordered heterogeneous logit models are developed each for an sc design based on a fixed number of attributes in which the dependent variable defines the number of attributes that are ignored we find that the degree to which individuals ignore attributes is influenced by the dimensionality of the sc experiment the deviation of attribute levels from an experienced reference alternative the use of adding up attributes where feasible the number of choice sets evaluated and the personal income of the respondent the empirical evidence supports the view that individuals appear to adopt a range of coping strategies that are consistent with how they process information in real markets and that aligning choice complexity with the amount of information to process is potentially misleading relevancy is what matters copyright 2006 john wiley sons ltd

decoupling economic growth from carbon emissions growth in the united states the role of research and development abstract the united states has achieved economic growth compatible with carbon reduction since 2007 this work is addressed to understand the eight effects especially effects related to research development rd whereas economic scale was the primary inhibitor to the drop of carbon emission followed by investment intensity population size and sectoral energy structure the results of decoupling efforts analysis uncover that energy intensity r d intensity r d efficiency and sectoral carbon intensity contributed to decoupling economic growth from carbon emission whereas investment intensity population size and sectoral energy structure did not contribute to the decoupling finally some policy implications are proposed

software copyright infringement among college students in recent years the issue of infringement in the software industry has gained international attention as the demand for software continues to grow the growing presence of unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted products inhibits full potential growth and discourages creative activity this study analyses the extent of software copyright infringement among college students and attitudes of these students with regard to risk of apprehension and conviction this study finds a significantly higher likelihood of infringement for computer majors and male students and a decrease in the likelihood of infringement for older students this study also uncovers differences in attitudes toward risk of apprehension and conviction between majors in scientific fields and those in business and economics whereas the first group of majors appears to exhibit risky behaviour the latter tends to be more risk averse

trading higher software piracy for higher profits the case of phantom piracy faced with the sustained problem of piracy that costs nearly 40 billion in annual revenue losses the software industry has adopted a number of technical legal and economic strategies to curb piracy and stem the resulting losses our work complements and contributes to the existing literature by exploring the possible effect of another economic lever product bundling on the relationship governing piracy and seller profits the traditional economic rationale of demand pooling from bundling that enables sellers to extract higher surplus and its particular attractiveness for information goods with negligible marginal and bundling costs carry over to our analysis however the presence of piracy injects several new facets to our analysis bundling creates a shared level of piracy of disparate products and under certain conditions to the detriment of one of the products we argue that by construction of the copyright laws the act of bundling itself can have a deterrence effect this deterrence effect alo

the welfare implications of unauthorized reproduction of intellectual property in the presence of demand network externalities this paper finds that unauthorized reproduction of intellectual property in the presence of demand network externalities can not only induce greater firm profits relative to the case where there is no copying it can lead to a pareto improvement in social welfare ceteris paribus when network externalities are present firms have a greater incentive to expand output because marginal revenue is higher and or they may wish to create preemptive installed bases this paper suggests that unauthorized copying can be a relatively efficient means of achieving this by allowing the firm in effect to price discriminate among different classes of consumers copyright 1994 by blackwell publishing ltd

the ethics of counterfeiting in the fashion industry quality credence and profit issues one of the greatest problems facing luxury goods firms in a globalizing market is that of counterfeiting the purpose of this paper is to analyze the different types of counterfeiting that take place in the fashion industry and the ethical issues raised we argue that the problem partly lies in the industry itself copying of designs is endemic and condoned which raises several ethical dilemmas in passing judgment on the practice of counterfeiting we analyze the ethical issues in a number of different types of counterfeiting encountered in the fashion industry we conclude with some observations on the general implications for ethics in intellectual property rights

carbon emissions embodied in value added chains in china abstract the literature on carbon leakage and embodied carbon in regional trade is extensive however many studies are primarily concerned with emissions embodied in demand supply chains and ignore the issue of carbon transfer behind the value added chains we promote a model to calculate value based emissions vbes and carbon emissions embodied in the value added chain using the multi regional input output model mrio taking china as an example vbes and carbon emissions embodied in value added chains at the sub national level based on mrio tables for 1997 and 2007 in china were analyzed transferred carbon emissions embodied in regional value added chains in china showed rapid growth between 1997 and 2007 however the absolute values of inter regional net transferred carbon emissions embodied in value added chains were small and showed a declining trend therefore the regional inequality between economic growth and carbon emissions pollution reduced between 1997 and 2007 although the amount of emissions embodied in regional value added chains increased as of the inter regional economic link in china gained close proximity

copying and indirect appropriability photocopying of journals creators and owners of intellectual properties are alarmed by the growth of technologies that ease the tasks of copying these properties this paper however shows that the unauthorized copying of intellectual properties need not be harmful and actually may be beneficial the empirical impact of photocopying on publishers of journals is examined in an attempt to discover if publishers can indirectly appropriate revenues from users who are not original purchasers the evidence indicates that publishers can indirectly appropriate revenues from users who do not directly purchase journals and that photocopying has not harmed journal publishers 18 references 1 table

counterfeiters foes or friends how counterfeits affect sales by product quality tier a key concern about counterfeits and weak intellectual property protection is that they may hamper innovation by displacing legitimate sales this paper combines a natural policy experiment with randomized lab experiments to estimate the heterogeneous impacts of counterfeiting on the sales and consumer purchase intent related to branded products of various quality levels i collect new product line level panel data 1993 2004 on chinese shoe companies i identify heterogeneous effects of counterfeit entry on sales of authentic products of three quality tiers finding that counterfeits have both advertising effects for a brand and substitution effects for authentic products additionally the effects linger for some years the advertising effect dominates the substitution effect for high end authentic product sales and the substitution effect outweighs the advertising effect for low end product sales the positive effect of counterfeits is most pronounced for high fashion products such as women s high le

court decisions and equity markets estimating the value of copyright protection abstract we construct a database of u s federal court decisions pertaining to copyright and changes in federal statutory copyright law and use this database to assemble indices measuring changes in the breadth of copyright protection we combine our indices with information on excess returns to equity from a quarterly panel of firms and estimate how the breadth of copyright affects the market valuation of firm equity a typical statute that increases copyright breadth generates an increase in a firm s excess return to equity of 40 209 basis points depending on the exact time frame the size of the firm and the importance of the change in statutory law a typical high court decision expanding copyright generates a 13 105 basis point increase in excess returns our results are robust across 4 5 year subsamples and the size distribution of firms our statutory findings are strongest in the most recent portion of the sample

strategic disclosure of meaningful information to rival i study a model of strategic disclosure of a private signal to a rival in the presence of a payoff externality in the model two agents forecast the unknown true state of a future period specifically the quality of the signal is also private information hence which quality of signal is revealed for which incentive is the main question of interest i show that even when disclosure is costly the revealing equilibrium where an agent voluntarily reveals his signal can exist and it should be a monotone equilibrium asymmetry between the penalty for an incorrect forecast and the reward for a correct forecast is a necessary condition for the existence of this revealing equilibrium if the penalty is larger than the reward the unique revealing equilibrium is a separating equilibrium where only the low quality signal is disclosed in order to induce the rival s imitation on the other hand if the reward is much larger than the penalty the unique revealing equilibrium is a pooling equilibrium where the signal is always revealed in order to induce the rival s deviation if the reward is not much larger than the penalty no revealing equilibrium is robust to a costly disclosure jel d81 d82

can entrepreneurial firms benefit from product piracy abstract we examine the potential benefits of product piracy to entrepreneurial firms specifically we use a resource based perspective to show that a decrease in the inimitability of an entrepreneurial firm s intellectual property does not necessarily diminish performance when piracy increases the value of this resource and an information economics perspective to explain why and when imitation can increase the value of an intellectual property resource this explanation reconciles empirical studies that indicate mixed results it also expands the resource based view by suggesting that reducing the value of one resource can directly increase the value of another

driving forces of rapid co2 emissions growth a case of korea abstract this study aims to investigate korea s final demand structure and its impacts on co 2 emissions in order to reduce co 2 emissions and develop environmental policy directions based on the environmentally extended input output model this study adopts a two step approach 1 to estimate the embodied emissions and their intensities for 393 sectors induced by final demand and 2 to calculate the driving factors of emission growth between 2003 and 2011 and then evaluate the result by using structural decomposition analysis sda the findings of this study demonstrate that the impact of composition change in export with less embodied emission intensities tends to offset the increase in co 2 emission by the export scale growth the relatively low residential electricity price has resulted in the rapid growth of household electricity consumption and significantly contributed to emissions growth the result of sda indicates that korea s final demand behavior yielded high carbonization over the same period the findings suggest that korean government should promote exports in industries with less embedded co 2 in order to protect environments in addition emission information of each product and service should be provided for consumers to change their purchase patterns towards contributing to low carbon emissions as active players

optimal pricing for information goods with piracy and saturation effect we analyze the pricing decision of a firm selling a product for which there is a significant and continuous saturation effect over time and that can be pirated assuming that the firm uses a skimming strategy we solve three profit maximization models given demand that is linearly decreasing in price few prices can be used over the life of the product the effects of both piracy and saturation are combined in the first model in the second model the firm can invest in technology or copyright enforcement to reduce piracy the third model describes the case in which piracy leads to increased awareness of the product and increased demand numerical sensitivity analysis and examples are used to illustrate the results the results indicate that under strong piracy and saturation effects a skimming strategy is suboptimal

the measurement of individual utility and social welfare it has been suggested by a number of economists that decisions about how to allocate scarce health care resources should be informed by the cost per quality adjusted life years qalys of the different alternatives one of the criticisms of the qaly approach is that it is based on the measurement of individual utility yet the values elicited are used to inform social choice in this respect it is argued that the qaly approach fails to take account of distributional issues that are known to be important in the context of health care this paper addresses this issue and presents an approach grounded in microeconomic theory that is flexible enough to deal with a wide range of efficiency equity trade offs while making the nature of the trade off transparent in addition it is an approach that is relatively simple to investigate empirically and the results of a preliminary study are presented as illustration of this

altruism and environmental risks to health of parents and their children abstract this paper tests an equilibrium condition from a model that incorporates 1 altruism of parents toward their young children and 2 household production of latent health risks the model demonstrates that an altruistic parent s marginal rate of substitution between an environmental health risk to herself and to her child is equal to the ratio of marginal risk reduction costs econometric estimates support this prediction based on data from a stated preference survey involving 488 parents of children aged 3 12 years this outcome implies that parents reallocate family resources to at least partly offset the effectiveness of public programs that aim to reduce their children s environmental risks

co2 emissions embodied in china us trade input output analysis based on the emergy dollar ratio to gain insight into changes in co2 emissions embodied in china us trade an input output analysis based on the emergy dollar ratio edr is used to estimate embodied co2 emissions a structural decomposition analysis sda is employed to analyze the driving factors for changes in co2 emissions embodied in china s exports to the us during 2002 2007 the results of the input output analysis show that net export of co2 emissions increased quickly from 2002 to 2005 but decreased from 2005 to 2007 these trends are due to a reduction in total co2 emission intensity a decrease in the exchange rate and small imports of embodied co2 emissions the results of the sda demonstrate that total export volume was the largest driving factor for the increase in embodied co2 emissions during 2002 2007 followed by intermediate input structure direct co2 emissions intensity had a negative effect on changes in embodied co2 emissions the results suggest that china should establish a framework for allocating emission responsibilities enhance energy efficiency and improve intermediate input structure

socio economic development and software piracy an empirical assessment the high rate of software piracy is a growing concern for software developers as well as businesses and governments it is argued here that the piracy rate is influenced by expected benefits and costs to the pirates a model is developed using a set of variables that may affect such benefits and costs and hence piracy rate in a country and tested for a large sample of 53 countries the results of this paper suggest that the existing socio economic conditions and the lack of proper institutions in developing and emerging economies may be responsible for high software piracy rates one may therefore infer that the current trends of globalization and socio economic development may help software piracy in developing countries

carbon emissions embodied in demand supply chains in china abstract using the multi regional input output model mrio the paper distinguishes the carbon emissions embodied in commodities for domestic final consumption cbes consumption based emissions and those for export ebes export based emissions and then calculates carbon emissions embodied in the demand supply chains for consumption and export based on technical coefficients matrix of the mrio for one country taking china as an example we provide a dynamic analysis of cbes ebes and carbon emissions embodied in consumption and export demand supply chains at the sub national level based on the mrio tables for 1997 and 2007 the results show that in china the transferred carbon emissions embodied in demand supply chains driven by consumption and export both showed rapid growth during 1997 2007 and the net transferred carbon emissions embodied in the demand supply chains showed an increasing trend as well less developed regions with abundant fossil fuels tend to net flow out carbon emissions

on criminals risk attitudes abstract if criminals are expected utility maximizers and more sensitive to changes in the certainty than the severity of punishment they must be risk preferrers we show that risk aversion is not ruled out if the expected utility hypothesis is weakened 1997 elsevier science s a

obtaining strategic advantage from being imitated when can encouraging clones pay an important business strategy research theme concerns finding ways to minimize competition faced by the firm this paper however focuses on a different set of situations the model developed suggests that an innovator s best strategy may be to encourage clones of its product when a network externality is present key factors to consider in assessing whether encouraging cloning is the innovator s best strategy are 1 the benefit to be derived in terms of added user base contributed by the clone sales traded off against 2 the unit sales that will be lost to the clones these factors in turn depend upon the strength of the network effect and the degree to which the innovator s product quality is perceived by consumers to be superior to the clone s the model further suggests that both the innovator and clone earn their highest payoffs when the clone takes the lead in price setting i e when the clone establishes its own price by considering for each price it might set how the innovator will react to that price and the innovator as price follower responds to the price the clone chooses the paper demonstrates that the clone leader innovator follower situation represents the unique nash equilibrium in price setting strategies a central implication is that when operating in a network externality environment instead of a problem to be avoided clones may be valuable assets to an innovating firm building up the user base for the innovator s technology by bringing lower valuing consumers into the market which in turn makes the innovator s product more attractive to high and medium valuing purchasers thus when the above described conditions hold being cloned can be more profitable for an innovating firm than dominating the market alone

to pirate or not to pirate a comparative study of the ethical versus other influences on the consumer s software acquisition mode decision consumers of software often face an acquisition mode decision namely whether to purchase or pirate that software in terms of consumer welfare consumers who pirate software may stand in opposition to those who purchase it marketers also face a decision whether to attempt to thwart that piracy or to ignore if not encourage it as an aid to their software s diffusion and policymakers face the decision whether to adopt interventionist policies which are government centric or laissez faire policies which are marketer centric here in order to assess the decision making of all three of these stakeholders we focus on the consumer s point of view as central and examine it by considering on a comparative basis the ethical dimension versus other dimensions including economic legal and other salient consumer behavior considerations based on a survey of 689 software consumers conducted over the internet the results indicate that ethics as a factor is embedded in a multidimensional set of determinant factors influencing software piracy including attitudes legal aspects social support perceptions of economic loss and age policy and research implications based on these findings are provided

imbalance of carbon emissions embodied in the us japan trade temporal change and driving factors abstract in us japan trade japan ran both economic export surplus and export co2 emission surplus with the us positive net monetary exports for japan were actually a kind of economic losses of the us while positive net export co2 emissions or net co2 emissions embodied in us japan trade were regarded as pollution transfer from u s to japan however due to lack of unified measurement units and standards between the two research fields it is difficult to directly assess whether positive effects of u s via carbon transfer outweigh negative effects caused by economic losses the study transforms absolute values of net monetary exports and net export co2 emissions from 2000 to 2011 in us japan trade into two ratios the ratio of net monetary exports to gdp of u s and the ratio of net embodied co2 emissions to total co2 emissions of the us by comparison the result shows that on average net monetary exports between u s and japan accounted for 0 45 of american gdp while ratio of net export emissions to aggregate consumption based co2 emissions of u s kept about 0 20 during the research period concerned which indicated that negative effects of economic losses in u s outweighed positive effects via carbon transfer in us japan trade furthermore a structural analysis of co2 emissions embodied in us japan trade during the 11 years is given the most significant driver was emission coefficients defined as co2 emissions per unit of energy consumption the driving force of emission coefficients led to dramatic reduction in co2 flows from japan to the us and thus caused decrease of net export emissions which also explained the major reason for the low ratio of export emissions to total co2 emissions of the us finally according to sectoral distributions of co2 flows between japan and the us emission sources of two countries presented different characteristics

the sufficiency strategy would rich world frugality lower environmental impact abstract one alleged weapon against unsustainable environmental impact is for the wealthy to consume less this sufficiency strategy is to complement the efficiency strategy of lowering ratios of resource inputs to economic outputs the former would reduce the affluence factor in i pat the latter the technology factor that the latter strategy suffers from a consumption rebound is widely recognized this paper identifies a similar rebound when the affluence factor is autonomously lowered the lower initial demand lowers prices which in turn stimulates new demand by others the strategy moreover addresses only the rich raising questions of its theoretical maximum efficacy its proponents usually conflate frugality with the north south dichotomy and intra generational with inter generational equity moreover there are difficulties with the supporting arguments that frugality is good for one s own sake as well as for the environment and that the rich should lead the way to living more lightly personal behaviour change is furthermore not a substitute for international political efforts finally since all changes in right side factors of the i pat equation change other right side factors such indirect attacks on impact should be abandoned in favor of supply and emissions quotas