Researchers have widely postulated that the adoption of information technology (IT) products enhances global competitiveness and production efficiency as successful technological innovation replaces and improves traditional inputs and modes of production. This study suggests that when IT products are traded across borders, IT investment in an economy has a positive influence on the productivity of its import partner country. We provide empirical evidence for the positive effect of global IT diffusion on productivity through international trading of IT products. The results show a positive effect of foreign IT transfer on the recipient country's productivity. In addition, we find that the effect of transferred IT is only significant when the source country is an IT-intensive or hi-tech export country. The results and implications are robust, even controlling for other important factors such as openness, innovative capacity, and IT infrastructure in addition to the transferred IT. Finally, a panel cointegration test--a recently developed advanced econometric method--is used to address the common problems of spurious relations that arise in regressions with nonstationary time-series data.
The pervasiveness of software piracy throughout the world is having a profound effect on the software publishing industry and the development of digital intellectual properties and technologies--especially in developing countries, where the piracy rates are extremely high. An economic model is first presented that incorporates the incentive structures for governments, software publishers, and individual consumers. The analytical model provides the economic rationale for the reluctance of a number of governments to aggressively enact and enforce intellectual property rights. An important proposition derived from the analysis states that the government's incentive to enact and enforce copyright laws are closely related to the size of the domestic software industry. The ensuing empirical study provides support for the proposition and further suggests that this relationship holds regardless of the income levels of the countries. Our analysis reveals that alliances between foreign and domestic software publishers through product relationships can be mutually beneficial and will provide an environment of increased copyright enforcement. These results provide a viable strategy to combat global software piracy. With strong policies on copyright enforcement, and a vigorous promotion of alliances between foreign and domestic publishers, a government can increase the net welfare of the country and help establish a strong domestic software industry. Through product relationships with domestic publishers, a foreign publisher can improve profits and operate in an environment of increased intellectual property protection. We then present a general model of ethical behavior related to the impact of behavioral and cultural factors on software piracy. The purpose of this model is to examine whether these determinants of piracy behavior are supranational and transcend cultural and ethical barriers. An empirical study involving U.S. and Indian graduate students suggests that the ge...
In an attempt to protect their intellectual property and compete effectively in an increasingly dynamic marketplace, software publishers have employed a number of preventive and deterrent controls to counter software piracy. Conventional wisdom suggests that reducing piracy will force consumers to acquire software legitimately, thus increasing firm profits. We develop an analytical model to test the implications of antipiracy measures on publisher profits. Our results suggest that preventive controls decrease profits and deterrent controls can potentially increase profits. Empirical results are also presented that support the proposition on the impact of deterrent controls on the extent of software piracy derived from the analytical model.
The role of frameworks in information systems has recently received a great deal of critical attention. One prominent indictment, which has been directed at even commonly accepted frameworks, is that they lack empirical support, and in fact are not constructed in operational terminology. This article reports the results of an experimental lab study using MBA students as subjects to investigate the tenets of the Gorry and Scott Morton framework (Gorry and Scott Morton, 1971). While firm support is found for the assumption that the level of information attributes varies across system type in the direction postulated, there is evidence that the ability to differentiate the component attributes is affected by such factors as field dependency and mode of presentation.