This paper examines evidence of the role that reputation plays in determining contractual outcomes. We conduct an empirical analysis of the Indian customized software industry. We analyze a data set containing detailed information about 230 projects carried out by 125 software firms that we had...

This paper investigates the role of skills and the division of labor among participants in collective inventions. Our analysis draws on a large sample of projects registered at Sourceforge.net, the world's largest incubator of open source software activity. We test the hypothesis that the level...

This paper investigates the role of skills and the division of labor among participants in collective inventions. Our analysis draws on a large sample of projects registered at Sourceforge.net, the world’s largest incubator of open source software activity. We explore the hypothesis that the...

Drawing insights from the field of innovation economics, we discuss the likely competitive environment shaping generative AI advances. Central to our analysis are the concepts of appropriability--whether firms in the industry are able to control the knowledge generated by their innovations--and...

This dissertation investigates how IPR enforcement by proprietary incumbents influences open source software (OSS) adoption and production. It suggests user interest and developer activity on OSS are negatively affected by IPR enforcement particularly for OSS projects technologically overlap...

A large number of studies has been canvassed by the growing rates of diffusion of Open Source Software. However, a formal analysis of the process of competition between open–source and proprietary software is still missing. We propose an epidemic model of innovation diffusion to deal with the...

Stallman proposed a revolutionary idea in 1984 with the "Free Software Foundation", subsequently confirmed in 1998 in the "Open Source Definition". The key concept is that there should be unrestricted access to computer programming codes: anyone should be able to use and modify them and...

In the wake of a series of court cases extending patents to software, open-source software proponents have proposed a number of arguments for limiting or even eliminating software patents. In particular, they claim that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has done a poor job of reviewing...

This paper casts light on the role of initial code release for providing coordination of joint search processes, i.e., search processes that involve several agents who search together. We develop hypotheses about the role of initial code release for providing coordination, and for whether...