The purpose of this paper is to analyse the question, whether copyright infringement of digital products like software commonly labelled as piracy impedes innovation. We find the answer depends on the nature of piracy i.e. whether it is end-users or commercial piracy. For end user piracy,...

This paper analyzes the impact of simultaneous increases in piracy (piracy effect) and network externalities (network effect) on R&D investment. A single firm's R&D investment increases (or decreases) if the network effect (or piracy effect) is dominant. With R&D competition, if the firms...