Economics

Economics - Papers & Notes

  • Licence: All material on this site including these papers are made available under the open licence detailed on the copying page.
  • Organization: (roughly) material is organized by subject matter then by time of update with the most recent first.
  • Other material: Other information, including announcements and more informal discussion, can be found on the main ‘blog’ section of the site in the Economics category.
  • Contacting me: details on how to contact me can be found on the About page.

Table of contents

Papers: Innovation, Knowledge Production and Openness

(In approximate reverse chronological order)

The Size and Value of the Public Domain

  • The Size of the EU Public Domain (Autumn 2010)

    This paper reports results from a large recent study of the public domain in the European Union. Based on a combination of catalogue and survey data our figures for the number of items (and works) in the public domain extend across a variety of media and provide one of the first quantitative estimates of the ‘size’ of the public domain in any jurisdiction. We find that for books and recordings the public domain is around 10-20% of published extant output and would consist of millions and hundreds of thousands of items respectively. For films the figure is dramatically lower (almost zero). We also establish some interesting figures relevant to the orphan works debate such as the number of catalogue entries without any identified author (approximately 10%).

  • The Value of the EU Public Domain

    This paper reports results from a large recent study of the public domain in the European Union. Based on a combination of catalogue, commercial and survey data we present detailed figures both on the prices (and price differences) of in copyright and public domain material and on the usage of that material. Combined with the estimates for the size of the EU public domain presented in the companion paper our results allow us to provide the first quantitative estimate for the value of the public domain (i.e. welfare gains from its existence) in any jurisdiction. We also find clear, and statistically significant, differences between the prices of in-copyright and public-domain in the two areas which we have significant data: books and sounds recordings in the UK. Patterns of usage indicate a significant demand for public domain material but limitations of the data make it difficult to draw conclusions on the impact of entry into the public domain on demand.

  • Summary Slides Covering Size and Value of the Public Domain - Talk at COMMUNIA in Feb 2010

  • Announce Post

  • Posts related to this research and EU Public Domain (EUPD) Project

The Dissemination of Scholarly Information: Old Approaches and New Possibilities

The Dissemination of Scholarly Information: Old Approaches and New Possibilities (pdf) with Omar Al-Ubaydli

  • July 2009
  • Current methods of disseminating scholarly information focus on the use of journals who retain exclusive rights in the material they publish. Using a simple model, this paper explores the technological reasons for this choice in the past, why it is no longer efficient and how it could be improved upon. (See this post for a longer overview)

The Economics of Public Sector Information (March 2009)

The Economics of Public Sector Information (pdf)

Models of Public Sector Information Provision via Trading Funds

  • Published: 2008-03-12 by BERR (UK Government Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform)
  • Link: Models of Public Sector Information Provision via Trading Funds (pdf)
  • This report was commissioned by HM Treasury and BERR and jointly written by myself, Professor Newbery (Cambridge University Economics Department) and Professor Bently (Cambridge University Law Department/CIPIL). For more details see the blog post

The Economics of Knowledge: A Review of the Theoretical Literature

Cumulative Innovation, Sampling and the Hold-up Problem

Innovation and Imitation with and without Intellectual Property Rights

Papers: Competition and Antitrust especially in Platform Markets

Changing the Numbers: UK Directory Enquiries Deregulation and the Failure of Choice

Changing the Numbers: UK Directory Enquiries Deregulation and the Failure of Choice (pdf)

The Control of Porting in Two-Sided Markets

Papers: Happiness and Well-Being

Theories of Contextual Judgement in Relation to Well-Being and Other Outcomes

Essays and early work

The Value of the Public Domain

P2P, Online File-Sharing, and the Music Industry: A Summary of the Literature

The Importance of Patents for Innovation in the Industrial Revolution

To Be Compatible or Not To Be Compatible: Strategy and Compatibility Choice in Network Markets with Special Attention to Microsoft

Review, Summaries and Notes

Miscellaneous