More Rights, Less Income?: An Economic Analysis of the New Copyright Law in Germany

Michael Karas and Roland Kirstein

Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), 2019, vol. 175, issue 3, 420-458

Abstract: We investigate the conflict between authors and their publishers that may result from a copyright system that allows authors to transfer copyrights to an additional publisher. A two-period bargaining model analyzes effects of competition, time preferences, and bargaining power on license prices, publisher investments, and authors' lifetime incomes. We demonstrate that authors benefit from the new copyright system if new publishers continue the distribution of their orphaned works. Authors do not necessarily benefit if exclusive publishers are still exploiting licenses, because high levels of competition result in underinvestment by publishers and in internalization effects during contract negotiations.

Keywords: institutional regulation; copyright law; bargaining; creative industries; author-publisher relationship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K23 O33 Z18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1628/jite-2019-0029

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