Despite the rapidly growing volume and economic importance of data in the digital economy, the legal framework for data ownership, access and trade remains incompletely defined in the EU and elsewhere. De facto data ownership dominates and often leads to fragmentation or anti-commons problems in...

One of the fundamental principles of copyright law is the expression vs. idea dichotomy, which states that copyright does not protect ideas but only expressions of ideas. According to this principle, a person who merely contributes an idea to a copyright work cannot claim authorship or joint...

For real or chattel property that possession is at the root of title is clear as a matter of legal history. For copyright in works, the answer in legal history to the question of what is at the root of title is not so clear and that lack of clarity has rendered basic aspects of modern law...

Copyright requires us to distinguish between two different ways of transforming a “work of authorship”: “derivative works” and “transformative fair uses.” The absence of a clear line results in a tendency to assign all value arising proximately from a work to copyright owners. Many...

This paper contrasts the determinants of entrepreneurial entry and high-growth aspiration entrepreneurship. Using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) surveys for 42 countries over the period 1998-2005, we analyse how institutional environment and entrepreneurial characteristics affect...

Social and cultural determinants of economic institutions and outcomes have come to the forefront of economic research. We introduce religiosity, measured as the share for which religion is important in daily life, to explain institutional quality in the form of property rights and the rule of...

The Coase theorem posits: If [1] property rights are perfect, [2] contracts are enforceable, [3] preferences are common knowledge, and [4] transaction costs are zero, then the initial alloca-tion of property rights only matters for distribution, not for efficiency. In this paper we claim that...

Globally, real estate trade is highly regularized. Usually, the market value is not negotiated simply between the seller and potential buyer but based on an assessment performed by a professional valuer, known as a surveyor or appraiser. This paper inquires about the economic role of valuers in...

We investigate whether patents that are jointly held by legally independent companies help sustain product-market collusion. We use a simple model of repeated interactions to show that joint patents can serve collusive purposes. Our model generates two testable predictions: when joint patents...

We provide a theory and empirical evidence indicating that the rotation of ruling elites in conjunction with elites ́asset ownership could improve property rights protection in non-democracies. The mechanism that upholds property rights is based on elites ́concern about the security of their...