In this paper we make use of a quasi-experiment in the market for illegal downloading to study movie box office revenues. Exogenous variation comes from the unexpected shutdown of the popular file hosting platform Megaupload.com on January 19, 2012. The estimation strategy is based on a quasi...

Taking down copyright-infringing websites is a way to reduce consumption of pirated media content and increase licensed consumption. We analyze the consequences of the shutdown of the most popular German video streaming website - kino.to - in June 2011. Using individual-level clickstream data,...

Human-created works represent critical data inputs to artificial intelligence (AI). Strategic behaviour can play a major role for AI training datasets, be it in limiting access to existing works or in deciding which types of new works to create or whether to create new works at all. We examine...

We run a field experiment to quantify the economic returns to data and informational ex-ternalities associated with algorithmic recommendation relative to human curation in the context of online news. Our results show that personalized recommendation can outperform human curation in terms of...

We study how trademarks affect reuse of creative works in the comics industry. As a creative industry, the comics industry systematically relies on copyrights. But trademark protection can also be exploited to generate income from the reuse of comic characters or to strategically exclude others...

Intellectual property rights are fundamental to how economies organize innovation and steer the diffusion of knowledge. Copyright law, in particular, has developed constantly to keep up with emerging technologies and the interests of creators, consumers, and intermediaries of the different...

Sampling poses an interesting problem in markets with experience goods. On the one hand, free samples reveal product quality and help consumers to make informed purchase decisions (promotional eff ect). On the other hand, sampling may induce consumers to substitute purchases with free...

Online copyright enforcement, in the form of either direct action against the supply- side (via website shutdowns) or the demand-side (via individual lawsuits against users), has not been very effective in reducing piracy. Regulators have therefore put forward the so called “follow the money"...

Taking down copyright-infringing websites is a way to reduce consumption of pirated media content and increase licensed consumption. We analyze the consequences of the shutdown of the most popular German video streaming website - kino.to - in June 2011. Using individual-level clickstream data,...

In this paper we make use of a quasi-experiment in the market for illegal downloading to study movie box office revenues. Exogenous variation comes from the unexpected shutdown of the popular file hosting platform Megaupload.com on January 19, 2012. The estimation strategy is based on a quasi...