Arbeitspapier

Private provision of a complementary public good

For several years, an increasing number of firms have been investing in Open Source Software (OSS). While improvements in such a non-excludable public good cannot be appropriated, companies can benefit indirectly in a complementary proprietary segment. We study this incentive for investment in OSS. In particular we ask how (1) market entry and (2) public investments in the public good affect the firms' production and profits. Surprisingly, we find that there exist cases where incumbents benefit from market entry. Moreover, we show the counter-intuitive result that public spending does not necessarily lead to a decreasing voluntary private contribution.

Language
Englisch

Bibliographic citation
Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 1756

Classification
Wirtschaft
Noncooperative Games
Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
Information and Internet Services; Computer Software

Event
Geistige Schöpfung
(who)
Schmidtke, Richard
Event
Veröffentlichung
(who)
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
(where)
Munich
(when)
2006

Handle
Last update
10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET

Data provider

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Object type

  • Arbeitspapier

Associated

  • Schmidtke, Richard
  • Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)

Time of origin

  • 2006

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