Should-Read: Barbara Biasi and Petra Moser: Effects of Copyrights on Science: Evidence from the WWII Book Republication Program

Should-Read: Barbara Biasi and Petra Moser: Effects of Copyrights on Science: Evidence from the WWII Book Republication Program: “In 1942, the American Book Republication Program (BRP) allowed US publishers to reprint exact copies of German-owned science books… https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2542879

…leading to a 25-percent decline in the price of BRP books. We use two alternative identification strategies to study the effects of this change on downstream science, and find that the reduction in access costs led to a substantial increase in the number of new scientific articles and books that used BRP books. A comparison across fields suggests that access costs matter most for disciplines, in which knowledge production is less intensive in physical capital, such as mathematics. To investigate the mechanism by which copyrights have affected science, we collect data on library holdings. These data indicate that lower access costs allowed a new set of poorer libraries to buy BRP books and make them available in their locations. Two alternative measures of scientific output – changes in the number of new PhDs in mathematics and changes in the number of US patents that use BRP books – confirm the main results…

September 12, 2017

AUTHORS:

Brad DeLong
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