Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/104537 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
DICE Discussion Paper No. 167
Publisher: 
Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE), Düsseldorf
Abstract: 
This paper studies the impact of software piracy on prominent and non-prominent software developers in markets based on a two-sided platform business. Consumer behavior is imperfect and, when adopting a platform, consumers only take prominent software into account. We show that prominent software exhibits higher piracy rates than non-prominent software. However, contrary to intuition, this does not necessarily mean that prominent software developers benefit more from increased software protection. Indeed, we show that prominent developers may lose out whereas non-prominent developers may gain from better software protection.
Subjects: 
Piracy
Platform
Software
Two-sided market
JEL: 
L11
L86
ISBN: 
978-3-86304-166-3
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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