This paper deals with the allocation of effort across the different software projects that collectively make up the Open Source Software ’ecology’. Free/Libre Open Source Software projects share many features with pure public goods; nonetheless, projects often compete for ’success’...

Do contributions to online content platforms induce a feedback loop of ever more user-generated content or will they discourage future contributions? To assess this, we use a randomized field experiment which added content to some pages in Wikipedia while leaving similar pages unchanged. We find...

This paper presents preliminary results from a pilot experiment dealing with the economic motivations to contribute to Free/Open Source Software (FOSS). In a seminal paper Bessen and Maskin (2006) argue that in a dynamic sequential innovation framework in which every innovation builds on...

Does data disclosure have an impact on citations? Four leading economics journals introduced a data disclosure policy between 2004 and 2006. We use panel data consisting of 17,135 article citing-year observations from 1996 to 2015 for articles published in these journals. Empirical articles that...

Endogeneity in network formation hinders the identification of the role social networks play in generating spillovers, peer effects and other externalities. This paper tackles this problem and investigates how the link network between articles on the German Wikipedia influences the attention and...

In the policy debate, intellectual property is often justified by what seems to be a straightforward argument: if innovators are not protected against others appropriating their ideas, incentives for innovation are suboptimally low. Now in most industries for most potential users, appropriating...

Are there positive or negative externalities in knowledge production? We analyze whether current contributions to knowledge production increase or decrease the future growth of knowledge. To assess this, we use a randomized field experiment that added content to some pages in Wikipedia while...

Does data disclosure have an impact on citations? Four leading economics journals introduced a data disclosure policy between 2004 and 2006. We use panel data consisting of 17,135 article citing-year observations from 1996 to 2015 for articles published in these journals. Empirical articles that...

Endogeneity in network formation hinders the identification of the role social networks play in generating spillovers, peer effects and other externalities. This paper tackles this problem and investigates how the link network between articles on the German Wikipedia influences the attention and...

In the policy debate, intellectual property is often justified by what seems to be a straightforward argument: if innovators are not protected against others appropriating their ideas, incentives for innovation are suboptimally low. Now in most industries for most potential users, appropriating...