What Is the True Loss Due to Piracy? Evidence from Microsoft Office in Hong Kong
通过香港281名大学生的数据，估计微软Office正版与不同盗版来源的需求系统，发现消除街头盗版后多数人会转向网络盗版，政府可能高估打击盗版的收益达9倍。
Software piracy remains rampant despite the successful measures the Hong Kong government has taken to eradicate street piracy. This is because most people prefer substituting a counterfeit copy of a software CD (street piracy) with an illegal download of the software (Internet piracy). To support this claim, I construct a unique data set from 281 college students in Hong Kong to demonstrate two things. First, I estimate a random-coefficient discrete choice demand system for Microsoft Office from legal and different illegal sources. Estimates obtained from a Bayesian approach, with a mixture of normal priors,\nindicate a strong substitution pattern between street piracy and Internet piracy. Second, I conduct counterfactuals in which street piracy is absent. Results are twofold. First, most students would switch to Internet piracy. Second, the government, by assuming that each pirated copy represents a lost sale, may over-estimate the gain from eradicating piracy by up to nine times.