Policymakers all over the world claim: no innovation without protection. For more than a century, critics have objected that the case for intellectual property is far from clear. This paper uses a game theoretic model to organise the debate. It is possible to model innovation as a prisoner's...

This paper discusses the psychological states associated with various theories of property. Many theories view property from the psychological perspective of the owner, describing how property enables an owner to create or present a self to the world, to enjoy a zone of liberty, to acquire the...

Garrett Hardin's “The Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin, 1968) is widely influential but fundamentally incorrect. Hardin characterizes the commons problem as arising from the exercise of free will in a world with limited carrying capacity. Hardin's solutions to this problem emphasize coercive...

As scientists are motivated by readership rather than by royalties, one might doubt that academic copyright is required for protecting the authors' property rights and for stimulating research. Consequently, the possibility of moving to an open access regime by abolishing academic copyright is...