Nature of human capital, technology and ownership of public goods

Besley and Ghatak (2001) show that public good should be owned by the agent who values the public good most — irrespective of technological factors. In this paper we relax their assumptions in a natural way by allowing the agents to be indispensable and show that relative valuations are not the sole determinant of optimal ownership structure but also nature of human capital and technology matter.property rights, public goods, indispensability, technology

Mixing Private and Public Service Providers and Specialization

We analyze the reform of public sector welfare services such as education. In this paper we compare a mix of private and a public service provider with full privatization. In both cases the suppliers specialize in serving particular customer types. In the mixed institution the government sets the public fee such that service quality does not deteriorate and the price of the private supplier is anchored at comparatively low level. Under full privatization, however, prices escalate to the highest possible level. As a consequence, consumer welfare is higher with a mixed institution – unless the proportion of low-cost customers is high. The mixed institution can also accommodate wealth constraints of customers to some extent.private and public suppliers, specialization, welfare services, mixed institutions

Digital Technology and the Allocation of Ownership in the Music Industry

We apply the property rights theory of Grossman-Hart-Moore in the music industry and study the optimal allocation of copyright between the artists who create music and the labels who promote and distribute it. Digital technology opens up a role for new intermediaries. We find that entry of online platforms occurs only if they are sufficiently more productive in distribution than the incumbent label. Furthermore, entry leads to a change in bargaining positions and it can become optimal for the copyright to be shifted from the label to the artist. (Updated from working paper 04/096)property rights theory, copyright, internet, music industry

Reputation and Ownership of Public Goods

This paper analyzes the effect of reputation on ownership of public goods in the Besley and Ghatak (2001) model. We show that in the dynamic setup the optimal ownership depends not only on the relative valuations for the public good but also on technology (elasticity of investment). We also show that joint ownership of public good can be optimal in both the static and repeated game but it emerges for a different parameter range. Our results are applied to the case of return of cultural goods to their country of origin.public goods, property rights, reputation, joint ownership, cultural goods

Digital Technology and the Allocation of Ownership in the Music Industry

This paper analyses the innovation process of music goods from an organisational point of view and the effects of digital technology on the allocation of property rights. We apply the property rights theory framework introduced by Grossman-Hart-Moore (GHM) to the music industry and study the contractual relationship between artists who create music and labels who promote and distribute it. In the spirit of GHM, different types of ownership structures are analysed. The result confirms the current allocation of property rights as it suggests that music labels, whose role in the production process is indispensable due to their promotion and distribution knowledge, should own the copyright. However as digital technology advances further, alternative ways to promote and distribute music develop - labels become less indispensable. We find scenarios where the incumbent ownership structure ceases to be optimal. Moreover, we discuss new organisational structures of the music industry. We introduce a mentor, an alternative intermediary to the label and analyse its effect on the optimal allocation of ownership. Our main result is that label ownership becomes less likely.property rights theory, copyright, internet, music industry

Algebraic approach to vibrational spectra of tetrahedral molecules: a case study of silicon tetrafluoride

Both the stretch and bend vibrational spectrum and the intensity of infrared transitions in a tetrahedral molecule are studied in a U(2) algebraic model, where the spurious states in the model Hamiltonian and the wavefunctions are exactly removed. As an example, we apply the model to silicon tetrafluoride SiF$_4$.Comment: Revtex, 7 pages, no figure, to appear in Chem. Phys. Let