Open Access to Research Data: Strategic Delay and the Ambiguous Welfare E¤ects of Mandatory Data Disclosure

Mandatory data disclosure is an essential feature for credible empirical work but comes at a cost: First, authors might invest less in data generation if they are not the full residual claimants of their data after their \u85rst publication. Second, authors might "strategically delay " the time of submission of papers in order to fully exploit their data in subsequent research. We analyze a three-stage model of publication and data disclosure. We derive exact conditions for positive welfare e¤ects of mandatory data disclosure. However, we \u85nd that the transition to mandatory data disclosure has negative welfare properties if authors delay strategically