Anfang Juli 2005 hat das Europäische Parlament die Softwarepatentrichtlinie zurückgewiesen. Nach welchen Regeln werden computerimplementierte Erfindungen derzeit behandelt? Welche Folgen hat die Ablehnung der Richtlinie für die zukünftige Behandlung von Software-Entwicklungen?

The economic characteristics of software and transaction costs explain, why closed source and open source software co-exist. It is about the efficient use of a non- and anti-scarce resource. But because of ex-post transaction costs that lead to information asymmetries, some property rights...

There is considerable debate regarding the use of intellectual property rights (IPR) to spur innovation in the software industry. In this paper we focus on the choice of intellectual property right regimes and industry growth. We begin by developing a growth optimal mixture of open source and...

The dissertation includes four studies broadly connected to the causes and consequences of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-8 from a political economy perspective. Following the intro-duction, Chapter 2 analyzes the political roots of massive foreign reserves accumulation, which has...

The aim of this paper is to empirically test a theory of access that investigates the logic behind the apparent ad hoc lobbying behavior of business interests in the EU multi-level system. First, I propose the theoretical framework that attempts to explain the access of different organizational...

Dieser Bericht stellt erste Ergebnisse der deutschen Teilstudie des Forschungsprojekts „Access and legitimacy“ vor. Ausgehend von der wachsenden Bedeutung europäischer Politik untersucht dieses Projekt, wie Interessengruppen und soziale Bewegungen auf die EU-Politik im Allgemeinen und die...

This paper studies the capacity of business interests to contribute to the democratic legitimacy of EU governance through participation in the EU policy-making process. Whereas the unbalanced participation of business as opposed to non-business interests in EU policy-making has been...

Patents have long been regarded as the 'gold standard' of intellectual property protection. In 'Little patents and big secrets: managing intellectual property', Anton and Yao (2004) call this traditional view into question by finding that firms keep their most important innovations secret. This...

Vor dem Hintergrund der weiter wachsenden Bedeutung der Volksrepublik China in der Weltwirtschaft beschäftigt sich die Arbeit mit dem dortigen Schutz von Patenten. Das chinesische Patentsystem entspricht dem internationalen Standard des TRIPS-Übereinkommens. Die Analyse von Patentanmeldungen...

If redistribution is distortionary, and if the income of skilled workers is due to knowledgeintensive activities and depends positively on intellectual property, a social planner which cares about income distribution may in principle want to use a reduction in Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs)...