Artistic Markets and Intellectual Property Rights

This paper discusses the role of copying and intellectual property rights in the context of artistic markets. Based on the distinction between stars and modest artists and on the use of advertising, we show in a static model that, under reasonable conditions, weakening intellectual property rights reduces stars rents but widens the market for modest artists and increases their number. We then extend our setting to an overlapping-generations model of artists. We assume that only a given proportion of young artists come out with talent and become stars in their second life-period. We show that weakening intellectual property rights increases the number of both young artists and stars in the long run. Since the average price of artistic goods is also lower, consumerswelfare rises