A General Theory of Textbook Market,Copyright Law and Strategic Incentives
Date Issued
2009
Date
2009
Author(s)
Chen, Tsung-Chi
Abstract
Economists have long been depending on textbooks to instruct the theories on Economics, but few of them are dedicated to researching the market of textbook. People tend to develop a number of misunderstandings and paradoxes due to lack of sufficient knowledge. In the past, most studies on Economics concentrated on the duplicates so as to ignore the research of the original items. People think incorrectly that the textbook market is able to trade normally for the improvement of the quality and the advancement of the industry as long as the piracy can be stopped by the Copyright Law. In addition to challenge the traditional theories of supporting the Copyright Law, this research proposes a new model to explain the economic activities in textbook market. This research can be divided into three parts: At first, we look backwards to the past studies on textbook, discuss the piracy, plagiarism, related thoughts, and how to evolve till now. Some college students in America have recently protested the high prices of textbooks so that both the supply and demand appeared in court. It’s also included and analyzed further in this research. Furthermore, by observing the individual behavior, we construct a general theory model to explain how the textbooks market works. For the past studies, they only put emphasis on the partial balance in the aspect of supply. Our model strengthens the aspect of demand. Meanwhile, we consider the ”quality of textbooks” as the center of our theory, which is quite different from the traditional studies on the overconcern of the “quantities”. Our theory model can explain the multi-influences on textbook market under the Copyright Law. Especially when the laws change the economic incentives, each economic unit takes the responding strategy. At last, according to Varian (2005), it’s possible to seek a solution without the Copyright Law. Also, we examine it subject to Delong (2000) as a standard of “the market failure”. The result proves that the Copyright Law is unable to improve the economic efficiency of textbook market. This research defines the quality variations negatively by depreciation rate, and the non-durable level for the duration goods. So, the possibility of “endogenous Variable” appears. After considering the quality variations, our model is superior to the traditionally partial equilibrium studies. In our model, the Copyright Law can only increase the trading quantities instead of improving the quality. That is, the textbook industry protected under the Copyright Law doesn’t contribute too much to the society in view of the economic growth and technological advancement; instead, it might lead to too much burden to our society.
Subjects
Textbook Market
Copyright Law
Market Failure
Depreciation rate
Textboojs Inflation
Textbook Industry
Copyleft
SDGs
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-98-P94323020-1.pdf
Size
23.53 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):be6439056461557d5894ab8d8633005b