Published Papers
We introduce a newly available data set containing U.S. copyright records for 1978–2021. The data include nearly 19 million copyright registrations, as well as more than 12 million records of copyright renewals, terminations of granted rights, rights transfers, and other activities. The data include both raw and processed files, along with code books, documentation, and our data processing scripts; we provide tips and guidelines for using these data. We facilitate further research by linking copyright registration records with firm identifiers in Compustat as well as U.S. federal litigation data. We then use the data for three descriptive exercises. First, we characterize the relative usage of patenting and copyright protection across firms and industries. Second, we document the propensities for firms registering copyrights to be involved in copyright litigation. Third, we compare actual data on the incidence of copyright and patent registration with commonly used proxies: advertising and research and development expenditure. We hope that the availability of these data can facilitate progress on copyright research to parallel the broader intellectual property literature that has blossomed since patent data became widely available.
Recent work has emphasized the disproportionate bias faced by minorities when interacting with law enforcement. However, research on the topic has been hampered by biased sampling in administrative data, namely that records of police interactions with citizens only reflect information on the civilians that police elect to investigate, and not civilians that police observe but do not investigate. In this work, we address a related bias in administrative police data which has received less empirical attention, namely reporting biases around investigations that have taken place. Further, we investigate whether digital monitoring tools help mitigate this reporting bias. To do so, we examine changes in reports of interactions between law enforcement and citizens in the wake of the New York City Police Department’s replacement of analog memo books with mobile smartphones. Results from a staggered difference in differences estimation indicate a significant increase in reports of citizen stops once the new smartphones are deployed. Importantly, we observe that the rise is driven by increased reports of “unproductive” stops, stops involving non-White citizens, and stops occurring in areas characterized by a greater concentration of crime and non-White residents. These results reinforce the recent observation that prior work has likely underestimated the extent of racial bias in policing. Further, they highlight that the implementation of digital monitoring tools can mitigate the issue to some extent.
This paper examines the effect of the expiry of recording copyright on the supply of music— in the form of re‑releases and concert performances— by artists popular in the UK in the 1960s. In a sample of 11 639 tracks by 135 artists first released between 1928 and 1975, we find that the expiry of recording copyright is associated with an approximately 286–327 % increase in the number of re‑releases, holding constant artist, age and year fixed effects. The effect is not significantly different for the most popular artists in our sample, and is not apparent in placebo regressions on a sample of US re‑releases. However, when a track’s original recording copyright expires, it becomes less likely to be performed in concert, particularly by UK‑focused artists, after controlling for age, year and artist fixed effects. These results suggest that copyright term extensions may lead to fewer re‑releases but more live performances of popular music first recorded approximately fifty years ago.
Although economic theory suggests that markets may “tip” towards a dominant platform or standard, there are many prominent examples of persistent incompatibility, inter‑platform competition and standards proliferation. This paper examines the phenomena of forking, fragmentation and splintering in markets with network effects. We illustrate several causes of mis‑coordination, as well as the tools that firms and industries use to fight it, through short cases of standardization in railroad gauges, modems, operating systems, instant messaging and Internet browsers. We conclude by discussing managerial implications and directions for future research.
Working Papers
What is the value of re‑use? Complementarities in Popular Music [Conditional
Accept, Management Science]
Digitization has drastically lowered the costs of replicating and distributing music, enabling piracy on the demand side, as well as supply‑side re‑use and recontextualization. This paper examines cumulative creativity and re‑use through the release of derivative works in the popular music industry. Combining novel data on “digital sampling” and cover songs with a new proprietary Spotify data‑set tracking online music streaming, I study how the introduction of a derivative work impacts the market for the underlying good upon which it is based. With my data‑set covering 11 682 artists and their daily streaming demand between 2015 and 2016, I utilize a matched‑sample difference‑in‑differences estimator to find that, on average, re‑use causes a 3 % increase in demand for the treated artists. This effect is significantly mediated by prominence — with the effect neutralized for highly prominent artists, while artists of low prominence have a larger 6 % boost in listening. Novel re‑uses of artists that have not been subject to extensive past re‑use appear to have the largest effect, resulting in an average 15 % increase in online streaming. These results highlight an advertising effect of re‑use, suggest that derivative works have limited ex post competition with upstream works, and point toward the potential benefits of permissive intellectual property rights licensing.
This study examines the broader consequences of gunshot detection technologies (GDTs), a controversial but increasingly common form of automated surveillance in law enforcement. While prior research has focused on GDTs’ effects on firearm-related outcomes, their influence on policing behavior remains underexplored. Drawing on literature on workplace monitoring, technology adoption, and algorithmic bias, we assess how GDT deployment affects the frequency and nature of police-citizen interactions. Using district-level panel data and the phased rollout of ShotSpotter across Chicago police districts, we apply a difference-in-differences design and report five key findings. First, GDTs lead to a clear decline in citizen stops, with no evidence of differential effects by race. Second, this reduction in stops is not accompanied by an increase in crime. Third, crime reports are more likely to lead to arrest, suggesting improved investigative efficiency. Fourth, citizen complaints against officers rise after GDT deployment, particularly those alleging improper search. Fifth, this increase in complaints occurs despite the decline in stops, implying a rise in complaints per interaction. Taken together, these findings suggest that while GDTs may reduce the extent of routine policing, they may simultaneously intensify the enforcement actions that do occur. Our results contribute to ongoing debates about law enforcement surveillance tools, offering evidence that complicates claims that such technologies necessarily worsen or reduce bias. They also highlight the importance of institutional safeguards to ensure that gains in efficiency do not erode procedural fairness or community trust. We discuss implications for both the literature on technological monitoring and on policing technology.
Whereas the role of patents in cumulative innovation has been well established, little work has examined the impact that copyright policy may have on cumulative innovation in creative content industries. Utilizing U.S. federal court decisions that strengthened the breadth of copyright policy, this paper examines the implications of those decisions on the re‑use of original content in the popular music industry, particularly hip‑hop music. With a novel, self‑collected data‑set that tracks re‑use through “digital sampling” in hip‑hop music, I explore the impact that these federal copyright cases had on the production process of hip‑hop music through changes in sampling practices. I find that digital sampling, wherein new musical works are created in part from existing sound recordings, significantly decreased following a 1991 decision that effectively strengthened rights for the original rights holder and restricted downstream re‑use. Additionally, this policy change affected the creativity of new works by limiting the diversity of music that is re‑used in new products. I also find that this effect on sampling was greatest in magnitude for the most prominent artists.