Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T04:20:34.709Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Institutional entrepreneurship, wikipedia, and the opportunity of the commons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2016

RYAN SAFNER
RYAN SAFNER*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Copyright laws traditionally attempt to incentivize expression and minimize free rider problems through legal restrictions, at the expense of closing off access to cultural history. However, entrepreneurial changes to institutions and the creation of alternative governance structures can allow for spaces that facilitate expression without resorting to the copyright approach. Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, stands as a highly visible example of such institutional entrepreneurship, leveraging copyright law against its intended purpose. This paper uses the Bloomington School's IAD framework to explain the success of Wikipedia's alternative model of managing a common resource of free encyclopedia articles, and suggests a roadmap for understanding the role of institutional entrepreneurship in crafting alternative governance structures to foster expression.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Institutional Economics , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 743 - 771
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aaltonen, A. and Seiler, S. (2014), ‘Quantifying Spillovers in Open Source Content Production: Evidence from Wikipedia’, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE, CEP Discussion Papers.Google Scholar
Alchian, A. (1965), ‘Some Economics of Property Rights’, Il Politico, 30 (4): 816–829.Google Scholar
Aligica, P. D. and Tarko, V. (2013), ‘Co-production, Polycentricity, and Value Heterogeneity: The Ostroms’ Public Choice Institutionalism Revisited’, American Political Science Review, 107 (4): 726–741.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, C. (2008), The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, New York: Hyperion.Google Scholar
Anderson, C. (2009), Free: How Today's Smartest Businesses Profit by Giving Something for Nothing, New York: Hyperion.Google Scholar
Anderson, C. (2012), Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, New York: Crown Business.Google Scholar
Arrow, Kenneth J. (1962), ‘Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention’ in Groves, Harold M. (ed.), The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors, Princeton: Princeton University Press: 609–625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumol, W. J. (1990), ‘Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive’, Journal of Political Economy, 98 (5): 893–921.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, T. W. (2014), Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law, and the Common Good, Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center.Google Scholar
Benkler, Y. (2002), ‘Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and ‘the Nature of the Firm’, Yale Law Journal, 112 (3): 369–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benkler, Y. (2006), The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Besen, S. M. and Raskind, L. J. (1991), ‘An introduction to the Law and Economics of Intellectual Property’, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 6 (1): 3–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boettke, P. J., Coyne, C. J., and Leeson, P. T. (2004), ‘Institutional Stickiness and the New Development Economics’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 67 (2): 331–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boldrin, M. and Levine, D. K. (2008), Against Intellectual Monopoly, New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyle, J. (2007), ‘Mertonianism Unbound? Imagining Free, Decentralized Access to Most Cultural and Scientific Material’, in Hess, C. and Ostrom, E. (eds.), Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Boyle, J. (2008), The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, J. M. (1964), ‘What Should Economists Do?’, Southern Economic Journal, 30 (3): 213–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchanan, J. M. and Tullock, G. (1962), The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, J. M. and Yoon, Y. J. (2000), ‘Symmetric Tragedies: Commons and Anticommons’, Journal of Law and Economics, 43 (1): 1–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cole, D. H., Epstein, G., and McGinnis, M. D. (2014), ‘Digging Deeper into Hardin's Pasture: The Complex Institutional Structure of “the Tragedy of the Commons”’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 10 (3): 353–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Congleton, R. (2011), Perfecting Parliament: Constitutional Reform, Liberalism, and the Rise of Western Democracy, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Demsetz, H. (1964), ‘The Exchange and Enforcement of Property Rights’, Journal of Law and Economics, 7: 11–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demsetz, H. (1969), ‘Toward a Theory of Property Rights’, American Economic Review, 57 (2): 347–359.Google Scholar
Demsetz, H. (1970), ‘The Private Production of Public Goods’, Journal of Law and Economics, 13: 293–306.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dourado, E. and Tabarrok, A. (2015), ‘Public Choice Perspectives on Intellectual Property’, Public Choice, 163: 129–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Downes, L. (2009), The Laws of Disruption: Harnessing the New Forces that Govern Life and Business in the Digital Age, New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Frey, B. S., Luthi, R., and Osterloh, M. (2011), ‘Community Enterprises-an Institutional Innovation’, CESifo Working Paper, 3428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frischmann, B. M., Madison, M., and Strandburg, K. J. (2014), Governing Knowledge Commons, New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giles, J. (2005), ‘Special Report: Internet Encyclopaedias Go Head to Head’, Nature, 438: 900–901.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glott, R., Schmidt, P., and Ghosh, R. (2010), ‘Wikipedia Survey-Overview of Results, UNU-Merit Collaborative Creativity Group’, UNU-Merit, <http://web.archive.org/web/20110728182429/http://www.wikipediasurvey.org/docs/WikipediaOverview_15March2010-FINAL.pdf>, last accessed January 1 2015.,+last+accessed+January+1+2015.>Google Scholar
Greenstein, S. and Zhu, F. (2012), ‘Is Wikipedia Biased?’, American Economic Review, 102 (3): 343–348.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardin, G. (1968), ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, 162: 1243–1248.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hargreaves, I. (2011), ‘Digital Opportunity: A Review of Intellectual Property and Growth’, United Kingdom Department for Business Innovation & Skills.Google Scholar
Hasty, R. T., Garvalosa, R. C., Barbato, V. A., Valdes, P. J., Powers, D. W., Hernandez, E., John, J. S., Suciu, G., Qureshi, F., Popa-Radu, M., Jose, S. S., Drexler, N., Patankar, R., Paz, J. R., King, C. W., Garber, H. N., Valladares, M. G., and Somji, A. A. (2014), ‘Wikipedia vs Peer-Reviewed Medical Literature for Information About the 10 Most Costly Medical Conditions’, The Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, 114 (5): 468–373.Google ScholarPubMed
Hayek, F. A. (1973), Law, Legislation, and Liberty Volume 1: Rules and Order, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Heller, M. (1997), ‘The Tragedy of the Anticommons: Property in the Transition from Marx to Markets’, Harvard Law Review, 111 (3): 621–688.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heller, M. (2008), The Gridlock Economy: How too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives, New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Hess, C. and Ostrom, E. (2007a), ‘The Framework for Analyzing the Knowledge Commons’, in Hess, C. and Ostrom, E. (eds.), Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hess, C. and Ostrom, E. (2007b), ‘Introduction: An Overview of the Knowledge Commons’, in Hess, C. and Ostrom, E. (eds.), Understanding Knowledge as a Commons: From Theory to Practice, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hoffman, D. A. and Mehra, S. (2010), ‘Wikitruth Through Wikiorder’, Emory Law Journal, 59 (1): 151.Google Scholar
Hume, D. (2012[1740]), A Treatise of Human Nature, 5th edition, Project Gutenberg. available at: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4705/4705-h/4705-h.htm Google Scholar
Johnson, E. E. (2012), ‘Intellectual Property and the Incentive Fallacy’, Florida State University Law Review, 39: 623–679.Google Scholar
Kaletka, C. and Pelka, B. (2011), ‘Web 2.0 Revisited: User-Generated Content as a Social Innovation’, International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, 5 (2–3): 264–275.Google Scholar
Kelly, K. (1999), New Rules for the New Economy, New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Kinsella, N. S. (2008), Against Intellectual Property, Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute.Google Scholar
Landes, W. M. and Posner, R. A. (2003), The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law, USA: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Leeson, P. T. and Boettke, P. J. (2009), ‘Two-tiered Entrepreneurship and Economic Development’, International Review of Law and Economics, 29: 252–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lessig, L. (2004), Free Culture, USA: Penguin Publishing.Google Scholar
Li, D. D., Feng, J., and Jiang, H. (2006), ‘Institutional Entrepreneurs’, American Economic Review, 96 (2): 358–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, A. and Thomas, D. (2013), ‘Two-tiered Entrepreneurship and the Congressional Committee System’, Public Choice, 154: 21–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGinnis, M. D. ed. (1999), Polycentric Governance and Development: Readings from the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nordhaus, W. (1969), Invention, Growth and Welfare: A Theoretical Treatment of Technological Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Olson, M. (1965), The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Olson, M. (1993), ‘Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development’, American Political Science Review, 87 (3): 567–576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostrom, E. (1990), Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostrom, E. (2010), ‘Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems’, American Economic Review, 100 (3): 641–672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parks, R. B., Baker, P., Kiser, C., and Oakerson, L. L. (1981), ‘Consumers as Coproducers of Public Services: Some Economic and Institutional Considerations’, Policy Studies Journal, 9: 1001–1011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polborn, M. (2007), ‘Competing for Recognition Through Public Good Provision’, CESifo Working Paper, 1920.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ransbotham, S., Kane, G. C., and Lurie, N. H. (2012), ‘Network Characteristics and the Value of Collaborative User-generated Content’, Marketing Science, 31 (3): 387–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raymond, E. S. (1999), The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary, New York: O'Reilly Media, Inc.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ridley, M. (2011), The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Safner, R. (2016), ‘The Perils of Copyright Regulation’, The Review of Austrian Economics, 29 (2): 121–137 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schotter, A. (1981), The Economic Theory of Social Institutions, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schweik, C. M. and English, R. C. (2012), Internet Success: A Study of Open-Source Software Commons, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shirky, C. (2008), Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Stigler, G. J. (1971), ‘The Economic Theory of Regulation’, The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science, 2 (1): 3–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tapscott, D. and Williams, A. D. (2007), Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, USA: Portfolio.Google Scholar
Tullock, G. (2005), The Social Dilemma: Of Autocracy, Revolution, Coup d'etat, and War, Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Inc.Google Scholar
Wagner, R. E. (2013), ‘Public Finance Without Taxation: Free-riding as Institutional Artifact’, Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice, 30: 191–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, D. S., Ostrom, E., and Cox, M. E. (2013), ‘Generalizing the Core Design Principles for the Efficacy of Groups’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 90 (Supplement): S21–S23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wintrobe, R. (1990), ‘The Tinpot and the Totalitarian: An Economic Theory of Dictatorship’, American Political Science Review, 84 (3): 849–872.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, X. and Zhu, F. (2011), ‘Group Size and Incentives to Contribute: A Natural Experiment at Chinese Wikipedia’, American Economic Review, 104 (4): 1601–1615.CrossRefGoogle Scholar