Copyright and the Profitability of Authorship: Evidence from Payments to Writers in the Romantic Period

Megan MacGarvie and Petra Moser

No 19521, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Proponents of stronger copyright terms have argued that stronger copyright terms encourage creativity by increasing the profitability of authorship. Empirical evidence, however, is scarce, because data on the profitability of authorship is typically not available to the public. Moreover at current copyright lengths of 70 years after the author's death, further extensions may not have any effects on the profitability of authorship. To investigate effects of copyright at lower pre-existing levels of protection, this chapter introduces a new data set of publishers' payments to authors of British fiction between 1800 and 1830. These data indicate that payments to authors nearly doubled following an increase in the length of copyright in 1814. These findings suggest that - starting from low pre-existing levels of protection - policies that strengthen copyright terms may, in fact, increase the profitability of authorship.

JEL-codes: K11 N83 O31 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-ipr, nep-pr~ and nep-law
Note: PR DAE
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published as Copyright and the Profitability of Authorship: Evidence from Payments to Writers in the Romantic Period , Megan MacGarvie, Petra Moser. in Economic Analysis of the Digital Economy , Goldfarb, Greenstein, and Tucker. 2015

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Chapter: Copyright and the Profitability of Authorship: Evidence from Payments to Writers in the Romantic Period (2015)
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