Returns to Open Source Software Engagement: An Empirical Test of the Signaling Hypothesis

Jürgen Bitzer, Ingo Geishecker () and Philipp Schroeder ()
Additional contact information
Ingo Geishecker: Department of Economics, University of Goettingen
Philipp Schroeder: Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, Denmark
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Philipp J.H. Schröder

No V-321-10, Working Papers from University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: Job-Market signaling is ranked high among the explanations why in- dividuals engage voluntarily in OSS projects. If true, signaling implies the existence of a wage premium for OSS engagement. However, due to a lack of data this issue has not been tested previously. Based on a novel data set comprising detailed demographic and wage information for some 7,000 German IT employees, this paper fills this gap. In the empirical analysis, however, we find no support for the signaling hypoth- esis, a result that is robust to different measures of OSS involvement and different model specifications.

Keywords: open source software; signaling; wage differentials (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2010-01, Revised 2010-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Oldenburg Working Papers, V-321-10

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.vwl.uni-oldenburg.de/download/Bitzer012010.pdf First version, 2010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:old:dpaper:321

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Oldenburg, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catharina Schramm ().