The Economic Effects of Counterfeiting
and Piracy: A Review and Implications
for Developing Countries

Carsten Fink, Keith E. Maskus, and Yi Qian

Policy makers around the world recognize the potentially harmful consequences of trade-
mark counterfeiting and copyright piracy. Indeed, many countries have recently initiated
policy reforms to strengthen the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPR).
Further, minimum standards of enforcement have been incorporated in many international
treaties, especially trade agreements. This emphasis on enforcement raises basic questions
about the actual impacts of IP rights infringement, which differ across the types of IPR
and economic sectors. We review the academic literature and other studies in the public
domain to evaluate what has been learned about these socioeconomic effects, with an empha-
sis on developing countries where possible. We also identify important gaps in our understand-
ing of the consequences of counterfeiting and piracy and develop recommendations on how
governments might collect data and conduct studies to better inform IPR enforcement policy.
Counterfeiting, Piracy, Intellectual property rights . JEL codes: L14, O31, O34

Intellectual property rights (IPR) cover a broad array of legal rules affording individ-
uals and enterprises, or their licensees, exclusive opportunities to make, copy, and
sell products and technologies arising from their inventive and creative work. These
rules range from patents on new inventions to trademarks and geographical indica-
tions certifying the origin of goods. These rules also include copyright on creative
and literary works, including software and digital transmissions. Because these
rights are national in scope, how they are deﬁned and protected varies considerably
across countries for a variety of reasons (Maskus 2012).
Despite their broad similarity as a means of supporting markets for knowledge,
various forms of IPR embody different economic and social objectives. It follows

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that their infringement, or actions taken by third parties in violation of exclusive
rights, interferes in varying degrees with attaining these objectives. Producing an
imitative good that infringes on one’s patent rights may diminish dynamic incen-
tives to invest in R&D, for example, though it can also bolster market competition
in a static sense. Moreover, there is an important international element: if IPR
infringement weakens the proﬁtability of largely foreign enterprises, why would
governments choose to invest in costly enforcement activities?
The particular forms of IPR infringement that have attracted the greatest global
policy interest are counterfeiting, which is the illegal use of trademarks to sell unau-
thorized goods, and piracy, which is the duplication and sale of copyrighted goods
without the copyright holder’s permission. Policy makers around the world recog-
nize the potentially harmful consequences of trademark counterfeiting and copy-
right piracy. First, infringements of intellectual property (IP) rights undermine trust
in rules-based systems that are at the core of modern market-based economies.
Second, counterfeit products can confuse consumers and may be ineffective or even
dangerous, as with adulterated medicines and foodstuffs or non-certiﬁed engine re-
placement parts. Third, extensive counterfeiting can signiﬁcantly deter the emer-
gence of new products and ﬁrms, and piracy can block the development of creative
industries, especially in poor countries where entry conditions are already weak.
Over the past two decades, many governments—including those of developing
countries—have initiated policy reforms to strengthen the enforcement of IPR
(Maskus 2012). In addition, minimum standards of enforcement have also been
incorporated in many international treaties, especially trade agreements, as IPR
owners in wealthier economies push for stronger global protection. For example,
the terms of the Trans-Paciﬁc Partnership (TPP), while still under negotiation,
embody extensive expectations for stronger border and domestic enforcement.
However, instituting a policy framework for combating counterfeiting and piracy
poses substantial challenges. The economic effects of infringements differ across dif-
ferent IPR and economic sectors (Fink 2009), and it is important to understand
these differences at the theoretical and empirical levels to set priorities for IPR en-
forcement policy. Governments are invariably resource-constrained, and completely
eradicating violations of IP law—similar to violations of other types of law—is out
of reach for even the best-resourced states. This is especially true for developing
countries, where many public goods are underprovided and enforcement challenges
exist in many areas of law.
Thus, in this article we review the academic literature and other studies in the
public domain to evaluate what is known about the socioeconomic effects of coun-
terfeiting and piracy.1 We also identify important gaps in the understanding of these
effects and develop recommendations on how governments might collect data and
conduct studies as inputs into the formulation of IPR enforcement policy. For the
most part, we ignore differences and limitations in the effectiveness of IPR

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enforcement measures, which are equally important but warrant a separate discus-
sion. Where relevant, we draw inferences from these studies about important impli-
cations for economic development and policy making in developing countries. In
particular, we highlight the importance of collecting better and more consistent
data, conducting microeconomic studies of the impacts of infringements on local
ﬁrms, and raising consumer awareness of the potential externalities they impose on
domestic producers and the potential risks consumers face with sub-standard
products. Governments may also wish to develop an impact evaluation framework
to assess their strategic investments in enforcement activities. This could be particu-
larly important in light of growing external pressures for stronger efforts in the
context of regional trade agreements.
The paper is structured as follows. In the next section, we approach the topic
from a theoretical perspective, ﬁrst reviewing the different market failures under-
lying trademark and copyright protection, and then exploring what happens
when these rights are violated. The discussion concludes with brief suggestions
for future theoretical research. In the next section we review existing empirical ev-
idence, including aggregate estimates of levels of counterfeiting and piracy, studies
of the effects of IPR infringements in particular industries, and anecdotal evidence
from selected case studies. In the ﬁnal section we explore what the ﬁndings of the
literature imply for policymaking in developing countries, and develop recommen-
dations for data collection and the conduct of future studies on counterfeiting and
piracy.

Theoretical Considerations
In general, intellectual property rights aim to remedy the failure of markets to
provide an efﬁcient allocation of resources. The relevant market failures that give
rise to copyright and trademark protection vary. Accordingly, the effects of trade-
mark counterfeiting and copyright piracy vary and warrant separate treatments.

Economics of Trademark Counterfeiting
The primary welfare effects of counterfeiting depend crucially on whether consum-
ers are deceived into believing that a fake good is produced by the owner of the
trademark. The likelihood of this deception depends on product characteristics and
the nature of distribution channels. For example, consumers are usually unable to
ascertain whether a pharmaceutical product contains the desired chemical ingredi-
ent, whereas most fashion shoppers can distinguish an original handbag from its
fake clone. We discuss the implications of deceptive and non-deceptive counterfeit-
ing in turn.

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Deceptive Counterfeiting. The most relevant market failure giving rise to trademark
protection arises from asymmetric information. For many goods, consumers do not
have enough information to ascertain the quality of a potential purchase. A trade-
mark guarantees that a product or a service originated with a particular producer.
This is valuable information to consumers because it reduces both uncertainty and
the costs of searching for particular quality levels. Indeed, producers compete by es-
tablishing a reputation for different levels of quality. In turn, trademarks serve as an
indication of product quality, a crucial support for functioning markets. Thus,
trademarks, geographical indications, and similar rights enable high-quality pro-
ducers to distinguish themselves in the market, supporting investments in improved
product or service quality.
Deceptive counterfeiters copy trademarks, logos, and designs to confuse consumers
into believing they are buying the legitimate product. In the presence of information
asymmetries, deceptive counterfeiting is virtually certain to reduce economic welfare
(Grossman and Shapiro 1988a). Those who discover they bought a fake good realize
less consumption value than the price they paid for it (Liu et al. 2005). Rational
consumers, aware that fake goods are on the market but are indistinguishable from
originals, are unwilling to pay the full price of a high-quality good. This problem un-
dermines the incentive for producers to invest in higher quality and may destroy
markets for high-quality goods (Akerlof 1970; Qian et al. 2013).
For developing countries, where deceptive counterfeiting sometimes reaches high
levels, at least two signiﬁcant costs arise (Maskus 2012). First, extensive anecdotal
evidence suggests that the likelihood of infringement deters market entry by local
enterprises, thus limiting the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises. In this
context, counterfeiting can be anti-competitive in a dynamic sense, even in poor
countries.
Second, for certain products, the consumption of deceptive fakes can generate
negative externalities. Examples would be an increased risk of disease transmission
in the case of pharmaceuticals, or environmental degradation in the case of indus-
trial chemicals. Indeed, the distribution of counterfeit drugs poses a signiﬁcant
public health challenge in many developing countries, especially in Africa.2 The
presence of negative externalities calls for public action against counterfeit prod-
ucts, independent of any private incentive for enforcing trademark rights.

Non-deceptive Counterfeiting. A more complex situation arises where consumers are
perfectly able to ascertain the quality attributes of goods at the moment of purchase
and therefore know whether they are buying a counterfeit. Because no information
asymmetry prevails, trademarks, at ﬁrst sight, seem irrelevant. However, for so-
called status goods the display of the producer’s name confers prestige on the pur-
chaser, yielding utility beyond that from the goods’ functional characteristics.
Counterfeiting of status goods can reduce the prestige value of genuine versions.

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Such value is real, as is manifested by the substantial marketing outlays of produc-
ers of luxury goods and the prevalence of counterfeits.
Grossman and Shapiro (1988b) analyze the effects of non-deceptive product
counterfeiting. In their simpliﬁed model, status value depends negatively on the
number of consumers who purchase a product bearing the same brand name,
whether genuine or fake. In this setting, the social welfare consequences of product
counterfeiting become theoretically ambiguous. Producers and consumers of the
genuine product are made worse off by counterfeits because their presence reduces
the status value, and therefore the price, of the genuine product. However, produc-
ers and consumers of the counterfeit product are better off. In particular, consum-
ers of fake products gain status value without paying the full price of the genuine
product. The overall effect on social welfare is an empirical question.

Strategic Responses to Counterfeiting. More recent analysis has identiﬁed further in-
teresting features of markets with fake goods. For example, Qian (2014a) models
the impacts of entry by counterfeiters on the subsequent responses of genuine pro-
ducers. Because counterfeits are usually an inferior imitation of the authentic
product, the theory adopts a vertical differentiation setup. In particular, the theory
incorporates two layers of asymmetric information potentially generated by coun-
terfeits: (1) counterfeiters fool buyers, and (2) buyers of counterfeits fool their peer
consumers by pretending to have high-status goods. One key prediction is that
entry by counterfeiters would induce a genuine producer to upgrade product
quality and raise the product’s price if and only if the entrant’s quality is lower than
a threshold level. In essence, genuine trademark owners must raise quality and
price (and reduce sales) to attract demand in the market, which is consistent with
evidence from China discussed in the next section. Note, however, that the possibili-
ty that original producers may invest in higher quality versions to compete with
counterfeiters does not imply higher economic welfare, or that the induced innova-
tion is efﬁcient. Qian et al. (2013) further show that competition from counterfeiting
induces branded ﬁrms to invest more in improving searchable quality attributes such
as appearance, and less in enhancing experiential attributes, such as functionality.
Competition from counterfeit products can either lower the prices of genuine
goods due to substitution in demand or raise their prices and production costs in
order to move up-market. In addition, Qian (2014a) demonstrates how authentic
producers could invest in “self-enforcement” strategies to limit the competition from
counterfeit goods. Such strategies include conspicuous packaging of products and
specially licensed company stores.3

Longer-term Welfare Considerations. Counterfeiting can encourage certain forms of
innovation among genuine producers in an attempt to differentiate their products
from imitations. This process is costly, however, perhaps especially in poor countries

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where the margin of high-income consumers seeking high-quality genuine goods is
relatively small. More fundamentally, under both deceptive and non-deceptive coun-
terfeiting, producers of genuine products realize lower proﬁts. Facing this problem,
original trademark owners become less willing to invest in developing new goods,
ultimately reducing the rate of new product development and lowering both entry
of new ﬁrms and consumer welfare (Aghion et al. 2005; Scherer 1967). We con-
clude that on balance, extensive counterfeiting is likely to harm consumers and
impede growth in poor and emerging economies.

Economics of Copyright Piracy
The need for copyright protection comes from three characteristics associated with
creative works such as books, music, ﬁlms, and software. First, these products can
be reproduced at low marginal cost; in the case of the Internet, reproduction occurs
at virtually zero marginal cost. The second characteristic is that their consumption
is non-rival; many people can enjoy them without diminishing availability for
others. The third characteristic of such works is that the creative process may
require costly sunk investments. If competitive market forces were to provide crea-
tive works at marginal cost, actors, artists, authors, producers, and publishers
would have little ﬁnancial incentive to undertake those investments. The copyright
offers a solution to this problem by affording producers of creative works the exclu-
sive rights to authorize and control their reproduction. In turn, genuine copies may
be sold at a proﬁt, allowing for the ﬁnancing of creative investments.4
In light of this essential economic rationale for protection, what are the implica-
tions of copyright piracy? The basic answer is that high levels of copyright infringe-
ments undermine the incentives for creating and licensing new works, ultimately
lowering social welfare. Unauthorized copying tends to ﬂourish where originals
command a high price, copying is cheap (as with digital goods and internet trans-
missions), and the likelihood of detection or meaningful punishment is low. In such
circumstances, widespread copying can signiﬁcantly diminish the incentives to
develop and produce new creative and literary works. This barrier seems particular-
ly relevant for indigenous music and software industries in developing countries
with high rates of piracy, where copiers pervasively target local performers and
emerging enterprises (Maskus 2000; Penna et al. 2004).
Beyond this basic framework a number of theoretical nuances should be men-
tioned. For example, theory suggests that piracy can raise or lower the price of origi-
nal works (Besen and Kirby 1989; Takeyama 1997). If consumers who prefer to
buy originals have sufﬁciently inelastic demand, it is possible for the prices they pay
to be higher in the presence of pirated copies. The reason is that copying would
induce original producers to concentrate their sales on this group, which pushes up

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price. Overall sales of legitimate copies are likely to be lower, however, because copy-
right owners would choose not to sell to the remaining market segment.
An example is the model by Harbaugh and Khemka (2010), who point out that
if copyright enforcement efforts are focused on larger users with higher valuations
for software, such as public enterprises, universities, and government agencies, the
original IP owners can charge higher-than-monopoly prices to those users. The re-
maining users in the market then purchase pirated copies. When enforcement is
spread more broadly throughout the market, however, original producers will sell
more legitimate copies and prices will fall, even as the volume of pirated goods di-
minishes. In this situation, it is possible to observe more genuine goods on the
market and an increase in overall consumer beneﬁts.5
Another reason prices may rise in the face of piracy is that unauthorized copying
may induce copyright holders to add features and functionality to genuine copies to
distinguish them in the marketplace. In turn, these features support higher prices,
which consumers of originals are willing to pay, whereas pirated copies command
lower prices (Varian 2000). An early variant of this concept is detailed by Liebowitz
(1985), who presents empirical evidence that academic journals raised their prices
after the introduction of photocopying because they had become more valuable to
consumers. A similar process is underway in academic publishing in the digital age,
with dramatic increases in subscription prices for paper copies (Maskus 2012).
Finally, note that books, journals, music, and videos are “information goods”
that can be shared across multiple uses through copying, rentals, and literal
sharing. This fact affects strategies of the content producers and copyright owners,
who must decide the formats, timing of releases, functionality, and prices of such
goods. According to Varian (2000), copyright owners are likely to sell fewer copies
at higher prices to manage the sharing problem. This strategy is likely to be proﬁt-
able when there are low transaction costs in sharing (e.g., movie rentals) and when
sharing markets permits separation of higher-valuation and lower-valuation users.
The former will receive goods faster at higher prices, and the latter will have delayed
access at lower prices or will enter lower-quality and, perhaps, pirated markets.

Network Effects. Piracy takes on interesting features in the presence of goods with
network externalities, in which one consumer’s valuation of a creative work in-
creases with the number of other consumers owning the same product. Computer
programs are an example, as the ability to share ﬁles with other users increases the
attractiveness of a particular software package.
What happens if creative works subject to network externalities are pirated?
Suppose that original and pirated copies are perfect substitutes, or at least highly in-
teroperable as in the case of software. Consumers of original copies gain because the
presence of pirated copies enlarges the network with which they can interact. In addi-
tion, sonsumers of pirated copies will beneﬁt from inexpensive access to the work.

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The effects of copyright piracy on the producer of the creative work and overall
welfare are ambiguous. As Conner and Rumelt (1991) and Takeyama (1994) show,
it is theoretically possible for the copyright owner to reap higher proﬁts from
certain levels of piracy. The intuition is that the enhanced network value of the
product may allow producers to charge a higher price for originals. Here, copyrights
support proﬁtable price discrimination. In theory, the copyright owner could
achieve the same outcome by simply giving away a certain number of original
works. In practice, this would not work because all consumers would expect a free
legitimate copy. However, consumers differ in their willingness to use pirated copies,
as determined, for example, by income levels. This difference allows the producer to
segment the market and choose the proﬁt-maximizing combination of price and
network size.6

Effects on Tax Revenue and Employment
In policy discussions on trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy, effects on
tax revenue and employment have gained in importance, especially in richer coun-
tries where ﬁrms see their IPR infringed on abroad. From an economic perspective,
these effects can be evaluated either in a shorter-term partial-equilibrium setting or
a longer-term general-equilibrium setting.
The overall partial-equilibrium employment effects are theoretically straightfor-
ward and depend on how output shifts between genuine and illicit producers and
the labor intensities of original and pirated copies. The same holds for tax revenues,
which are nearly certain to fall because sales of pirated and counterfeit products
occur in informal markets where taxes and import tariffs are usually not collected,
and because sales of legitimate producers likely decline. No existing theoretical re-
search examines the tradeoffs between employment in the formal and illicit infor-
mal sectors, including the setting of wages, the existence and impact of social safety
nets, and the nature and length of possible unemployment spells.
The long-term general-equilibrium effects of IPR infringement are often ignored
in policy discussions, but understanding them better is crucial. Again, direct im-
pacts in affected sectors are surely negative. However, workers losing employment
likely ﬁnd other jobs, and governments facing a revenue shortfall likely adjust their
tax structure to ﬁnance public spending. The key question is how workers and the
efﬁciency of the tax system fare in the counterfactual equilibrium. No formal model-
ing work seems to exist in the literature that would offer conceptual guidance.

Impacts on Trade, Foreign Direct Investment, and Licensing
The theoretical literature on the relationships between IPR protection and inter-
national trade, FDI, and licensing is deep and sophisticated.7 These linkages

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are important because they govern how policy reforms and enforcement affect
market-based inward technology transfer (ITT) into developing economies.
However, economic theory in this area focuses almost exclusively on IPR as technol-
ogy protection, for example patents and trade secrets, and has ignored trademark
counterfeiting and copyright piracy. Further, no models have considered the role of
stronger enforcement as being distinct from basic legal reforms.
Thus, a comprehensive review lies beyond the scope of this paper and we simply
state the primary theoretical ﬁndings. Because multiple channels exist for transfer-
ring technology, IPR in the recipient country has both scale effects and composition
effects. Regarding scale, multinational enterprises (MNEs) seeking to deploy a new
technology or sell a new good face a basic tradeoff when local IPR is enhanced
(Maskus and Penubarti 1995). Because local ﬁrms face higher imitation costs, their
outputs are reduced and MNEs sell more, whether through trade or FDI. At the same
time, MNEs face less elastic demand from consumers who continue to buy their
goods, thus permitting higher prices at reduced (monopolistic) volumes. This tradeoff
between market expansion and market power is fundamental to the theory of intellec-
tual property and ITT. This tradeoff extends to licensing as well: MNEs can expand the
number of contracts for technology use and production rights but they can also raise
royalty rates (Branstetter et al. 2006). The key point is that IPR reforms have ambigu-
ous impacts on ITT, at least in theory, making it an empirical question.
As for the composition of ITT, economic theory suggests that MNEs shift their em-
phasis from exports at weak IPR levels to FDI and then licensing as protection im-
proves (Markusen 2001; Javorcik 2004). This theory assumes (with little evidence)
that imported high-technology goods are relatively difﬁcult to imitate and thus
carry their own protection. As IPR is strengthened, MNEs gain more conﬁdence
that local afﬁliate production cannot readily be copied, and become more willing to
take advantage of cost reductions through FDI. However, technology remains inter-
nal to the ﬁrm for purposes of control. At yet higher protection levels, MNEs become
willing to license their technologies to local partners, thereby externalizing their
knowledge assets. A related factor is that stronger patents and trademarks increase
the conﬁdence that contracts are enforceable, making arm’s-length licensing more
attractive.
One additional strategic response (among many) is worth mentioning here.
Speciﬁcally, where MNEs fear losing their technological advantages to imitation
and their trademark reputations to counterfeiting, they may fragment their produc-
tion among multiple local plants at various locations to diminish information ﬂows
among them and gain more ability to deter infringement. This approach, which has
been common among MNEs operating in China (Maskus 2000), is inefﬁcient and
likely reduces net technology transfer. For example, Sun et al. (2010) demonstrate
theoretically that an MNE worried about imitation in an emerging market may
limit the range of technologies it offers to deter entry by local imitators.

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As mentioned, there are no theoretical studies focusing on FDI, licensing, and
ITT with respect to counterfeiting and piracy, our focus here. However, many of the
tradeoffs above surely apply. For example, reducing trademark infringement can
lower the local selling costs of MNEs and expand their markets, whether through
trade or FDI. Regional fragmentation of production is a costly reaction to counter-
feiting, as is the need to engage in private enforcement. And, because of weak copy-
rights, MNEs may deploy expensive software to deter copying or pay more for
programs on the market, as noted above. Presumably, these factors are deterrents
that companies take into account when deciding on investment locations.
It is important to note that high-technology imports and FDI support localized
learning and productivity gains in developing countries (Keller 2004; Branstetter
et al. 2006), which are important for supporting productivity growth. To the extent
that weak IPR diminishes such prospects, they have a negative dynamic impact on
development.

Recommendations for Future Theoretical Research
While the economic literature offers useful theoretical guidance on the economic
effects of counterfeiting and piracy, several issues deserve further exploration. We
highlight three such issues here. First, as we described previously, the presence of
(non-deceptive) counterfeit goods exerts an externality on consumers of originals.
In their analysis, Grossman and Shapiro (1988b) assume that this externality is
negative and takes the form of counterfeits diluting the exclusivity value of status
goods. This assumption is appropriate for some classes of goods but not for others,
and survey evidence suggests there is substantial heterogeneity in consumers’
decisions to purchase counterfeit versus authentic products Wilcox et al. (2009).
Other types of externalities are conceivable, and it would be important to analyze
how their presence affects consumers, the strategic reactions of producers, and
overall welfare.
Second, hardly any theoretical study has formally analyzed the short- and long-
term employment effects of counterfeiting and piracy. It would be especially
important to obtain conceptual guidance on how the different nature of formal and
informal labor markets affects the welfare of different types of workers. Such guid-
ance would seem especially important for developing countries, where informal
employment often accounts for a larger share of total employment. Developing a
better understanding of broader labor-market linkages may also be important for
designing effective IP enforcement policies Fink (2009).
Finally, it would be interesting to focus theoretical attention speciﬁcally on coun-
terfeiting and piracy in terms of their potential impacts on technology transfer and
localized learning. Little is known, for example, about how the enforceability of IPR
affects relationships between MNEs and local suppliers and distributors. Nor is there

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much analysis of how piracy and counterfeiting inﬂuence global franchising deci-
sions, which often embody considerable knowhow regarding market organization.

Review of Empirical Evidence
Economic theory is helpful for rigorously examining the likely effects of trademark
counterfeiting and copyright piracy. However, as we noted previously, some effects
are theoretically ambiguous and require empirical investigation. In addition, even
when the overall direction of effects is conceptually clear, empirical insights into the
scale of effects are needed for policy makers to set priorities for public policy.
Notwithstanding the need, generating credible empirical evidence poses a signiﬁ-
cant challenge. Counterfeiting and piracy, by their very nature, are illegal activities
and thus largely escape ofﬁcial statistical recording. The basis for empirical research
is thus weak, and studies must rely on indirect ofﬁcial data, selected information
supplied by rights holders, and original surveys to gather evidence. In addition,
welfare impacts such as producer and consumer surplus gains or losses are difﬁcult
to measure at both the individual and the aggregate societal level. Finally, the
limited empirical evidence that is available comes mostly from developed countries.
While this evidence can still inform policy makers in developing countries, there are
special characteristics of poorer economies that caution against the direct applica-
bility of this evidence—notably, different parameters of consumer demand and dif-
ferent legal and institutional frameworks.
In what follows we critically review relevant empirical studies, and focus on the
extent to which the underlying methodologies produce credible results. We begin
with a review of aggregate estimates of the level of counterfeiting and piracy. We
then examine studies that have evaluated the welfare impact of these activities at
the micro level, and review the studies that have speciﬁcally focused on the effects of
Internet ﬁle sharing. We conclude by evaluating the advantages and disadvantages
of alternative empirical approaches.

Aggregate Estimates of Levels of Counterfeiting and Piracy
We begin the review of aggregate estimates by considering efforts to ascertain the
incidence of piracy and counterfeiting in international trade. Focusing on trade
seems promising, because goods undergo processing when they cross borders. In
particular, customs authorities investigate suspected infringements of IP rights,
thereby generating indirect data on the incidence of pirated and counterfeit goods
in different product categories and for different exporting and importing economies.
The most comprehensive study attempting to quantify the importance of coun-
terfeit and pirated goods in international trade was conducted by the OECD (2008).

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This study estimated the value of pirated and counterfeit goods in international
trade at U.S. $200 billion, or approximately 2% of global merchandise trade in
2005. In an update of this study, the OECD (2009) estimated the value of illicit
goods in international trade as having grown to $250 billion in 2007 (largely re-
ﬂecting the growth in worldwide trade). These estimates do not include the value of
Internet-related piracy of digital goods, which easily cross borders but are almost
impossible to measure and, in any case, cannot be counted in any merchandise
trade categories.
The OECD (2008) report recognizes that its estimates are only “a crude indicator”
of the value of counterfeit and pirated products in international trade. This caution
is warranted. For instance, the OECD estimate employs data on interceptions and
seizures by customs authorities in selected countries to estimate the proportion
of counterfeit and pirated goods in different product groups and across exporting
economies. However, these values only provide information about the relative inci-
dence of pirated and counterfeit goods across product groups or across exporting
economies. To arrive at their estimates, OECD staff use a value of the absolute inci-
dence of counterfeit and pirated goods in one particular “ﬁx-point” product group
(e.g., apparel, leather articles, tobacco products). The value in question is not based
on any hard data, but rather seems to reﬂect the best guess of OECD staff.8
Notwithstanding these methodological caveats, the evidence on the relative
incidence of counterfeit and pirated goods across product groups is insightful. It
shows, for example, that trade in illicit goods is concentrated in a small number of
“sensitive” product categories; the top ﬁve product groups (at the two-digit Harmonized
System level) account for more than three-quarters of all customs seizures.

Industry Studies. Moving beyond trade, a large number of studies—often sponsored
by affected industries—attempt to quantify the incidence of pirated and counterfeit
goods at the level of speciﬁc sectors and to estimate their effects on certain economic
performance variables. The methodological approaches and quality of the data in
these studies vary substantially. A detailed review of each of these studies would go
beyond the scope of this article, but it is worth highlighting several common issues.
First, given the inherent difﬁculty of accurately measuring the prevailing levels of
counterfeiting and piracy, the reliability of any underlying estimate is in many cases
questionable. This difﬁculty applies to the results of original survey work. For
example, industry associations in the major copyright-intensive industries publish
annual surveys of piracy rates in major countries around the world. These question-
naires may collect useful information about attitudes toward piracy and means of
unauthorized copying, but the resulting estimates of illegitimate use need to be
treated with caution.
As a speciﬁc example, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) released their ninth
study in May 2012, in which they argued that the global piracy rate for PC software

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stood at around 42% in 2011, representing more than $60 billion (BSA 2012).
This ﬁnding came from a study of more than 110 countries, with piracy rates
ranging from approximately 19% (United States and Japan) to over 90% (Georgia
and Zimbabwe). To compute these rates, the study relied on surveys of sampled con-
sumers and businesses in a smaller set of 28 countries to determine the number of
computers in use and the share of legitimately procured software.9 The study then
estimated piracy rates for countries not in the sample surveys by means of a correla-
tion between software usage and an “information development index” published by
the International Telecommunications Union. The extent of bias in the estimates for
these non-sampled countries arising from both the underlying approach and the
application of the index is unknown. Regarding the latter, considerable variation is
likely to exist in its applicability to countries of differing economic and social charac-
teristics, as is the case for most such “development” indexes.
Second, estimates of the economic effects of counterfeiting and piracy often do
not account for demand responses—the possibility that not all consumers would
switch to the original product if the counterfeit or pirated version were unavailable.
Again, the BSA (2010) piracy estimates illustrate this point. Based on estimates of
the volume of unlicensed software, the BSA computes its commercial value by
applying a vector of prices for various kinds of computer programs including retail,
licensed, and open-source. This total value is then taken as a measure of lost sales
for legitimate software producers in each country. This approach assumes that each
unit of pirated software would be fully replaced by a purchased version if copying
were eliminated. That the BSA’s estimates of volumes and values foregone are likely
substantially overstated emerges from a recent study estimating demand responses
for one popular software product, Microsoft Ofﬁce. Relying on original conjoint
survey data from college students in Hong Kong, Leung (2013) estimated a discrete
choice demand system for Microsoft Ofﬁce from both legal and illegal sources; he
concludes that the true gain from eliminating all sources of piracy is only 15% of
the BSA’s estimated cost of piracy.
Third, the counterfactual market equilibrium analyzed is often not clearly spelled
out, nor does it seem realistic. In particular, studies provide estimates of the eco-
nomic implications of certain levels of counterfeiting and piracy, and associate those
levels with employment and tax losses without considering the longer-term general
equilibrium responses outlined previously. Possible employment effects in the infor-
mal sector are almost always ignored.10
Some studies attempt to consider cross-economy impacts, at least in an input-
output framework. Consider, for example, a widely-cited calculation of U.S. copy-
right industry sales, employment, and tax revenue losses (see Siwek 2007). The
author employed industry-generated measures, such as those from BSA and LEK, of
global sales losses in motion pictures, recorded music, software, and video games.
Siwek considered the sum of these losses to be an underestimate because not all

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countries are covered in all industry estimates. Making some adjustments for substi-
tution between pirated and legitimate copies, and valuing all lost sales at legitimate
prices, the study suggested a direct total loss of $25.6 billion for U.S. industries (in-
cluding retailers).
Siwek (2007) then applied “multipliers” available from the U.S. Department of
Commerce, derived from its input-output model of the U.S. economy, to determine
how this lost sales ﬁgure translates into total (direct plus indirect) losses in economic
activity and total employment lost. These basic calculations resulted in a total sales
loss for the U.S. economy of $58 billion per year, along with 373,000 jobs lost as a
result of global piracy. All of that translated further into an earnings loss of $16.3
billion and reduced tax collections of $2.6 billion. These are large ﬁgures but must be
kept in context.
Although the multipliers account for cross-industry impacts in a static sense, the
basic input-output approach again does not consider general-equilibrium linkages
in the economy. If there really were $25.6 billion in reduced demand for U.S. copy-
right goods, consumers would focus their expenditures elsewhere in the domestic
and international economies, while workers would move to alternative employment
and output and tax payments would rise there. Thus, Siwek’s (2007) study offers
an assessment of the gross losses in sales and employment but greatly overstates the
net losses. As we described previously, analysts would need to develop a general-
equilibrium model for the latter calculations with endogenous changes in sectoral
demands, output, and trade, while computing earnings losses at the difference
between with-piracy and without-piracy wage rates.

The United States International Trade Commission Analysis. Because of the methodo-
logical shortcomings outlined above, we are skeptical that the results of the studies
reviewed to this point offer useful guidance to policy makers. A more careful study
was performed by the United States International Trade Commission (USITC:
2011); this project focused exclusively on the effects of IPR infringement in China,
where concerns among major technology, fashion and content creators in the
United States, the EU, and other rich countries are primarily focused.
The USITC’s ﬁgures on gross sales lost due to Chinese infringement were taken
largely from surveys of American ﬁrms. These ﬁrms claimed sizable damages,
largely due to copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting, though issues of in-
digenous innovation and industrial espionage were also considered. Analysts at the
USITC applied these reported reductions in demand to their well-regarded computa-
tional general-equilibrium model. Such models are more ﬂexible and more in-
formative than simple computations with input-output tables, for they permit
endogenous responses in prices, outputs, factor use, trade, and product demands.
At any rate, the USITC model computed losses of nearly one million jobs in the
United States in the sectors most affected by Chinese infringement. There was,

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however, considerable uncertainty about this estimate depending on the scenarios
considered.
After having conducted this review, we observe that capturing the impacts of
global infringement of IPR is a complex and uncertain problem that could use far
more analytical and data attention. Moreover, there are no reliable computational
general-equilibrium studies on how infringement affects the economies of develop-
ing countries.11 This is not to say that the economy-wide effects are negligible and
do not deserve the attention of policy makers in both developed and developing
countries. We merely emphasize the challenge those policy makers face in address-
ing counterfeiting and piracy problems with limited empirical guidance on offer.

Micro-data Studies on the Effects of Counterfeiting and Piracy
Although obtaining aggregate estimates of the levels of counterfeiting and piracy is
important for understanding the scale of the problem, effective policy cannot be
devised without considering the micro level of ﬁrms and consumers.

Marketing Analyses and Consumer Surveys. Several marketing studies have been con-
ducted to help understand consumer psychology and behavior that characterize the
demand-side origin of counterfeiting. Although many of these are surveys or case
studies, a few are experiments. Generally, experiments—whether in the ﬁeld or in
the lab—generate more credible evidence, but they also face methodological limita-
tions. Field experiments that randomly assign people to control and treatment
groups potentially have higher external validity because participants are real-world
consumers making statements or decisions about the products of interest in (close
to) real-world settings. However, compared with a lab experiment, in a ﬁeld study it
is more difﬁcult to avoid interferences among participants and to exert tight control
over the randomized treatment manipulations. Field experiments therefore generate
results that are more susceptible to these “internal validity” concerns.
As an early study in this literature strand, Bloch et al. (1993) examined the
consumer’s role as an “accomplice” in the proliferation of product counterfeiting.
These authors presented results from a ﬁeld experiment showing that a surprisingly
large proportion of adult consumers will select a counterfeit garment over the
genuine good when there is a price advantage. The researchers also found that a
signiﬁcant price gap and negative attitudes toward large branded companies were
the main factors driving counterfeit demand.
In more recent work, Wilcox et al. (2009) conducted lab experiments and found
that products with branded logos were more likely to be valued for their ability to
help consumers gain social approval and status. In turn, this characteristic makes
consumers more willing to buy such products from counterfeiters.12

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Looking further into the determinants of why consumers purchase non-deceptive
counterfeit products, Vida (2007) reports on a consumer survey conducted in
Slovenia. The results suggested that personal religiosity and education tend to
reduce one’s willingness to buy fake goods. Such was not the case in Kwong et al.
(2003), who studied consumer attitudes toward pirated CDs in Hong Kong. These
researchers found that approximately 70% of the respondents stated that they
bought pirated CDs and that they thought this generated high social beneﬁt and
low social cost. However, both studies concluded that gender matters, in that men
are more willing to buy counterfeits than women. Bian and Veloutsou (2008) sur-
veyed consumers in China and the United Kingdom, and found that perceived ﬁnan-
cial, physical, and performance risks from consuming counterfeits were moderate.
Still, consumer willingness to buy fakes varied with each product and each country,
which makes it difﬁcult to draw general conclusions.
Finally, Casola et al. (2008) conducted three studies of consumer behavior in
hypothetical situations. All three studies revealed that consumers were less willing
to buy counterfeits when the victim was an individual rather than an organization.
The average consumer would buy fakes if they cost about one-third of the genuine
price. Finally, consumers’ willingness to buy counterfeit goods decreased if they
were informed of the harmful impacts imposed on others. Thus, spreading aware-
ness about the negative consequences of counterfeiting may be effective at deterring
demand.

Field Studies. Overall, studying consumer psychology is perhaps more useful for un-
derstanding why there is a demand for counterfeits than for estimating the econom-
ic impacts of counterfeiting. For the latter, it is more fruitful to collect ﬁeld data over
time to generate a sample panel on actual branded ﬁrms and their infringers. This
is a challenging task because of the illicit nature of counterfeiting and the conﬁden-
tiality concerns of both genuine and infringing companies. Nonetheless, a series of
recent studies have been carried out in this direction.
Qian (2008) offers the most comprehensive empirical investigation on the eco-
nomic impacts of counterfeits. This study also stands out in that it is one of a rela-
tively few studies that focus on a developing country. Qian collected original panel
data from Chinese shoe companies from 1993 to 2004 (after government enforce-
ment efforts were reduced in the footwear sector) through stratiﬁed random sam-
pling to identify and measure the effects of competition from counterfeit goods on
the prices, qualities, and other market outcomes of authentic footwear. The results
show that brands experiencing less government enforcement action differentiated
their products by introducing higher visible quality. These brands also engaged in
forms of self-enforcement by establishing vertical relationships with licensed down-
stream retailers (“company stores”) to control their sales, and setting higher prices

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to signal their legitimacy in the marketplace. All these reactions helped reduce
counterfeit sales in the period studied.
It should be clearly noted that all the innovation and differentiation strategies
mentioned above are costly. Although the authentic prices dropped initially under
competitive pressure from counterfeits, the long-term effects on driving up authen-
tic-product prices kicked in at various times for different ﬁrms. Larger ﬁrms with
more human capital and research-and-development resources were faster in re-
sponding and differentiating their products from counterfeits. Firms with more
exports responded slower, perhaps because they were more diversiﬁed and less inﬂu-
enced by domestic counterfeits (Qian and Xie 2010).
Field panel data of the kind used in the Chinese footwear study provide direct
measures of how various economic variables change over time within each brand,
but there are limitations that mean the results should be treated with caution. For
example, even when ﬁeld panel data are available for estimating how economic per-
formance changes in response to counterfeiting, the underlying mechanism may be
difﬁcult to identify. Qian (2014b) explored the sales impacts of counterfeiting based
on a combination of ﬁeld data and lab experiments, and found that counterfeits
have both a positive advertising effect (inducing more awareness of the brand) and
a negative substitution effect on authentic products (reducing their sales). The ad-
vertising effect dominates the substitution effect for high-end authentic product
sales, and the substitution effect outweighs the advertising effect for low-end
product sales. The advertising effect is found to be larger for fashion products and
for brands that were less well-known at the time of infringement. Another impor-
tant observation about consumer attitudes toward counterfeiting is that a high
degree of income inequality seems to cause a greater demand for fake goods (Qian
and Rucker 2013).
Finally, several micro-data studies examine the economic effects of copyright
piracy Notably, Hui and Png (2003) estimated the effects of physical CD piracy on the
legitimate demand for recorded music in an econometric setting. These authors’
model expressly accounts for the demand linkages outlined in the previous section
(sales of pirated copies could stimulate more demand for originals). Their econometric
results showed that piracy had a negative net effect on the demand for legitimate
music, though Hui and Png’s estimate of foregone sales by copyright holders was
58% lower than the music industry’s estimate (see International Federation of the
Phonographic Industry 2003). The latter assumed a one-to-one substitution of
pirated with legitimate purchases, whereas Hui and Png’s model allowed for a share
of price-sensitive consumers to choose not to switch to legitimate goods in the coun-
terfactual scenario. The Hui and Png analysis is limited, however, by an assumption
that copyright holders do not adjust prices in response to lower piracy.
That demand is responsive to prices charged for pirated and original copies also
emerges from an experimental study of the music consumption behavior of

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university students. Mafﬁoletti and Ramello (2004) found that in general, students’
willingness to pay for a CD is lower than the market price of a legitimate copy. Thus,
the hypothetical elimination of piracy would not expand sales of legitimate copies
on a one-to-one basis at existing prices. At the same time, the study reveals that stu-
dents’ willingness to pay for a pirated CD was substantially greater than its margin-
al cost. This ﬁnding clearly points to the possibility that copyright holders might
respond to stronger copyright enforcement by lowering their prices to capture a
larger number of consumers.13

The Effects of File Sharing on the Internet
One of the most frequently studied aspects of copyright infringement is how unau-
thorized downloading and ﬁle sharing have affected sales of recorded music offered
by major music publishers. It should be noted that this “end-user piracy” is some-
times different in intent from commercial piracy. In particular, many people who
download music for free and put music ﬁles on their computers in forms that can be
readily shared by others rarely attempt to make money from these actions.
Furthermore, some surveys suggest that many such users see little wrong with
freely taking and sharing digital information products. For example, a recent survey
of 1,607 people in the United Kingdom found that more than 80% admitted to
having downloaded at least one ﬁle without authorization, and 47% said they did
not think it was a crime (Bonnett 2010). In a survey of 1,000 U.S. college students
in 2003, 69% said they had downloaded music, and 75% of those indicated they
never paid for it (IPSOS Public Affairs 2003). Moreover, 76% responded that they
would download even if they suspected the music ﬁle was illegal. These perceptions
are among the reasons this form of unauthorized use is exceptionally difﬁcult to
control by copyright owners.
Regardless of the motivation, downloading and ﬁle sharing through peer-to-peer
(P2P) networks is common. The OECD (2005) calculated that one-third of Internet
users in its member nations have downloaded ﬁles from P2P networks. Regarding
the effects of downloading and ﬁle sharing, U.S. shipments of recorded music on
CDs fell by 25% between 2000 and 2005 (Recording Industry Association of
America 2006), and representatives of the music publishers blamed this trend on
illegal downloads and P2P ﬁle sharing. Most recently, a global music industry asso-
ciation noted a 7% drop in music sales in 2009, though it was unclear how much
was due to unauthorized activity (International Federation of the Phonographic
Industry 2010). That report claims that P2P piracy accounted for more than 20%
of global Internet trafﬁc, with higher shares in Latin America and Europe.
This proliferation of ﬁle sharing has negatively affected authorized music sales.
For example, Rob and Waldfogel (2006) collected data on albums obtained through
downloading or purchase and used surveys among students at the University of

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Pennsylvania to measure their valuation of this music. Using changes in Internet
access as an instrumental variable, they found that downloading reduced the per-
capita student expenditure on hit albums from 1999 to 2003 from $126 to $100,
though it raised per-student welfare by $70.
The most widely debated analysis surrounds the work of Oberholzer-Gee and
Strumpf (2007), who suggest that downloading could, in theory, increase or
decrease album sales due to the peering effects we outlined previously. These
authors regressed the volume of sales by album on the number of downloads of
songs on the album and other factors. To control for a possible simultaneity bias,
they used as a primary instrumental variable the number of German secondary
school children on holiday when they had more time to wait for downloads. Their
results were striking; in a basic ordinary least squares regression, the coefﬁcient of
sales on downloads was 1.09 and highly signiﬁcant, suggesting a large positive
impact. However, after adding album ﬁxed effects and ﬁrst-stage instrumentation,
they could ﬁnd no evidence that the number of times an album was downloaded
had a statistical impact on music sales, while the implied economic effects were
small.
This ﬁnding has been criticized on several grounds, primarily by Liebowitz
(2005; 2006; 2007). In their more recent study, Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf
(2010) acknowledged that ﬁle sharing has reduced music sales, but by more
modest amounts than generally supposed. Furthermore, they argue that offsetting
increases in demand for complementary music services have increased incentives
for the creation of new music, books, and movies. In other words, ﬁle sharing may
be damaging to music publishers but not necessarily to artists themselves, especial-
ly those who are younger and less well-known. However, this possibility deserves
further study. Unfortunately, empirical studies on the effects of copyright piracy—
whether physical or online—are almost exclusively conﬁned to developed countries.
To a good extent, this reﬂects the availability of data and the “home bias” of re-
searchers in developed economies. However, there are reasons to believe that copy-
right piracy is more widespread in poorer countries. For example, across a wide
range of countries, Fink (2009) reported a correlation coefﬁcient between software
piracy rates and per capita GDP in 2004 of 2 0.89. This likely reﬂects poorer
consumers turning more frequently to pirated goods, the greater importance of the
informal economy as a source of employment, and less developed and more
resource-constrained legal systems.
Copyright-based industries exist in most developing countries. In some—such as
the Philippines, Malaysia, and Mexico—these industries account for larger employ-
ment shares than in developed economies.14 Copyright piracy is bound to affect the
prospects of earning a livelihood from creative and artistic activities in poorer coun-
tries. One study on the music industry in West Africa reported anecdotal evidence
conﬁrming both the high incidence of piracy and its negative effect on musicians’

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incomes (Penna et al 2004). However, this study also pointed to a large number of
other barriers—from ineffective collection societies to tax policies—that render the
recording activities unproﬁtable for most musicians. How a reduction in piracy
levels alone would affect artists and those involved in the distribution of creative
works remains an open question.

Conclusions
We conclude this review with some observations on what the literature suggests
about the importance of policy initiatives for dealing with counterfeiting and piracy
in developing nations. We then discuss the need for further work to improve data
collection and analysis.

Implications for Policymaking in Developing Countries. As we have noted, most of the
studies we reviewed above offer evidence about the impacts of counterfeiting and
piracy in more developed economies, with the notable exception of Qian (2008;
2014b). Thus, readers may question their applicability to developing countries and
policy authorities. Indeed, there are important differences to note. First, the classic
“intellectual property industries” (high-end fashion, digital content, publishing,
software, and research-based pharmaceuticals, food products, and plant varieties)
play a smaller role in the production structures of poor countries. Rather, local
ﬁrms may be more focused on imitation and copying, while consumers may be
more open to buying fake goods. In this context, the immediate gains from stronger
IPR enforcement are likely to accrue to foreign content providers and multinational
enterprises, most of which develop the bulk of their intellectual property in rich
economies. It is thus not surprising that many developing countries face demands
for more stringent IP enforcement in bilateral and regional free trade agreements
they negotiate with developed countries.15 Notwithstanding the broader welfare
gains that such agreements could offer, policymakers in developing countries rea-
sonably wonder whether it makes sense to devote scarce development resources to
IPR enforcement.
However, it is important to point out that there is considerable and growing
heterogeneity among developing countries. Rapidly emerging economies such as
Brazil, Mexico, China, and Turkey see increasing interest among growing middle
classes for higher quality goods protected by recognizable brands. There is also a
rapid trend among innovative local ﬁrms toward brand development, investments
in product variety and quality, and R&D expenditures in numerous industries,
including software and digital content (Maskus 2012). In this regard, domestic
interests in stronger IPR protection and enforcement are rapidly emerging and chal-
lenging the political-economy equilibrium that favors weaker enforcement. These
countries presumably can learn from the experience of developed countries.

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Second, even poorer countries have signiﬁcant interests in stronger enforcement
for at least two reasons. One is that their citizens disproportionately suffer from adul-
terated counterfeit medicines and ineffective or dangerous foods and beverages. Basic
calculations suggest that this can be a major problem for sustaining public health in
poor countries and that there is a positive payoff from working to reduce such risks
(Maskus 2007). Another reason is that weak trademark enforcement can sharply
diminish prospects for effective brand development, ﬁrm entry, and national market-
ing success among potentially innovative companies in poor countries. Indeed, local
counterfeiting often targets domestic enterprises at least as much as foreign brands
(Mertha 2005). Similarly, extensive unauthorized copying of music, designs, and
other creative activities limits opportunities for artists and artisans to build local
markets, ultimately harming their ability to sell globally as well. Thus, public invest-
ments in enforcement and creative infrastructures, perhaps in partnership with
private entities, could help remove such barriers to entry. As a strategic matter, invari-
ably scarce enforcement resources could focus on reducing deceptive counterfeiting
(to deal with dangerous fakes) and educational campaigns on expanding consumer
awareness of how unauthorized copying negatively affects local artists.

Recommendations for Data Collection and Future Empirical Work. Policy makers in
countries at different stages of development are interested in better understanding
the economic effects of trademark counterfeiting and copyright piracy. So what di-
rection should future analytical work take? As discussed previously, many studies
exist that aim to quantify the extent of counterfeiting or piracy at the aggregate
level, be it sectoral or economy-wide. Most of these studies have serious shortcom-
ings, both in the data employed and in the adopted methodologies. More important,
aggregate estimates of the incidence of piracy and counterfeiting by themselves
offer policy makers little guidance on appropriate IP enforcement policies.
More useful guidance emerges from micro studies that take into account the spe-
ciﬁc characteristics of different industries and comprehensively assess the effects of
illicit activities on prices, consumer demand, company revenues, innovative behav-
ior, and overall welfare. Such studies are still scarce. Finding reliable and representa-
tive data is challenging and creative approaches are needed to establish causality
and derive credible estimates. Experimental studies offer one way forward, particu-
larly in combination with broader empirical investigations. For example, research-
ers could gather ﬁeld panel data to analyze the overall impacts of counterfeiting,
and supplement them with lab experiments to understand the underlying mecha-
nisms (see Qian 2014a; Qian and Rucker 2013).
The quality of any future empirical work will largely depend on the quality of the
underlying data, however. Given the illegal nature of counterfeiting and piracy, col-
lecting representative and systematic data on all relevant economic variables will

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continue to be a challenge, and progress will only be gradual. Nonetheless, several
promising avenues exist.
For example, more could be done to improve and harmonize data collection in
the course of IP enforcement activities. Customs statistics are an obvious place to
start because they are generally the most direct source of information about the
extent of piracy and counterfeiting ﬂows that cross international borders. Many
customs ofﬁces already compile and publish data on seizures of counterfeit and
pirated goods. Although the World Customs Organization has developed interna-
tional guidelines for reporting on seized products, actual reporting practices differ
substantially across countries. For example, some countries report the number of
seizures, whereas others focus on the quantity of seized goods, or the number of
consignments. Substantial differences also exist regarding the valuation of seized
goods (World Customs Organization 2009).
From an analytical point of view, it would be important to achieve as much consis-
tency as possible in the treatment of ﬁrms, products, and sectors. Data collection needs
to be done consistently over time to track trends and analyze the impacts of changes in
enforcement policy. Sampling interceptions data could be extended to detailed subcate-
gories of goods to gain a better understanding of the scope of counterfeit trade.
Beyond customs statistics, there is scope for collecting more comprehensive data
associated with domestic law enforcement activities, notably through the judicial
system. To our knowledge, no systemic effort exists at the international level to
promote and harmonize the collection of such data. Intergovernmental organiza-
tions can play a more active role in coordinating data collection initiatives, promot-
ing the harmonization of reporting standards, and offering technical assistance to
developing country governments.
At the domestic level, governments may want to consider adopting an impact
evaluation framework, especially when new IP enforcement policies and measures are
introduced. Continuous data gathering would be an essential component of such a
framework. Finding appropriate control groups against which enforcement activities
could be evaluated may prove challenging but is possible in certain circumstances—
especially when new initiatives are ﬁrst implemented on a pilot basis.
In addition, there is scope for conducting original surveys to support targeted ana-
lytical work. Surveys of rights holders on key performance characteristics as they
relate to counterfeiting activity could usefully complement ﬁrm-level data available
through industry or ofﬁcial sources. Depending on the industry, rights holders may
also possess valuable information on the nature of, and markets for, counterfeit and
pirated goods that was gathered in the course of their own market intelligence
and enforcement activities. Surveys of rights holders could take place within existing
cooperation programs between the public and private sectors. Such ﬁrm surveys
should be designed to collect as detailed and comprehensive data as possible while

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guaranteeing the anonymity of respondents when submitting sensitive business
information.16
In the longer term, as information from these surveys—especially across countries—
becomes more standardized and comprehensive, econometric models could be de-
veloped to estimate important market parameters about which limited information
exists. Most prominently, the demand characteristics and substitution parameters
between legitimate goods and counterfeit goods are important to estimate to gain
an accurate picture of damages imposed on rights holders and the associated effects
on employment and research-and-development spending. Such estimates need to
be subjected to signiﬁcant sensitivity and robustness analysis to ensure that they
can be deployed with conﬁdence.
After these parameters are estimated, it would be feasible to develop computational
general equilibrium models to assess the country-speciﬁc and international impacts
of counterfeiting and piracy, particularly accounting for cross-industry effects and em-
ployment channels. Models of this sort would be particularly useful for assessing the
potential impacts of additional policy efforts to counteract illicit trade and production.
It is important to emphasize, however, that such models necessarily rely on strong as-
sumptions that could be misleading in this context. For example, employment in the
counterfeiting and piracy sector is largely informal, and few models can manage the
linkages between informal sector and formal sector employment. Still, with appropri-
ate caveats, these models should be an improvement over existing estimates of
economy-wide losses in employment and tax revenues because those estimates do
not account for aggregate relationships in the economy.

Notes
Carsten Fink is the Chief Economist, World Intellectual Property Organization; carsten.ﬁnk@wipo.int.
Keith Maskus is a Professor of Economics, University of Colorado Boulder. Yi Qian is an Associate
Professor of Marketing and Behavioral Science, Sauder School of Business, University of British
Columbia. The authors contributed equally and are listed in alphabetical order. Helpful comments
from Intan Hamdan-Livramento, Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, and two anonymous referees are gratefully
acknowledged. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and should not be attributed to
any of the institutions with which they are afﬁliated.
1. The literature on counterfeiting and piracy is large and cannot be fully reviewed here. Instead,
we focus on widely-cited studies of counterfeiting and piracy and offer an overview of the various ap-
proaches that researchers have adopted.
2. See, for example, Newton et al. (2010). Counterfeit drugs are part of the broader challenge of
substandard pharmaceuticals, which also extends to generic medicines.
3. Taylor (1993) analyzed such “masking” strategies, which are costly in welfare terms. Again,
Maskus (2000; 2012) offers anecdotal evidence of such responses in developing countries.
4. Copyright protection is limited to strike a balance between incentives for creating new works
and the desirability of making them widely available. Thus, copyright has a limited term and certain

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exceptions and limitations to exclusive rights exist in areas in which society reaps special beneﬁts from
the rapid dissemination of creative works.
5. Maskus (2000) relates anecdotal evidence that this price moderation occurred in the software
industry when Taiwan improved its enforcement activities in the 1990s.
6. Conner (1995) offers a broader set of circumstances in which it might be proﬁtable for copyright
owners to accommodate copying in the presence of network effects and quality differences.
7. Maskus (2012) offers a full review, while Arora et al. (2001) set out comprehensive models.
8. Another problem is that the analysis takes place at the highly aggregated two-digit Harmonized
System categorization of traded goods. Within each such category, typically hundreds of goods subcate-
gories may or may not be subject to much counterfeiting. The OECD (2008) analysis assumes that its
average rates computed at the aggregate level apply to each subcategory. This list of methodological
problems is not exhaustive. The OECD (2008) report describes several other important problems that
likely bias the resulting estimates.
9. The difference between the total installed software and legitimately purchased software is the
amount of piracy. Although this approach is sensible in that it relies on reported measures of legitimate
usage in relation to overall computer capacity, both of which may be reliable, the BSA report does not
indicate what the underlying sampling biases may be. This approach also ascribes some use of open-
source software and freeware to piracy.
10. See, for example, Siwek (2007) and Frontier Economics (2009). The latter study considers the
reemployment of workers “losing” their jobs as a result of counterfeiting and piracy but does not con-
sider the effects of revenue-compensating tax policies. In addition, the assumption of a certain share of
workers not ﬁnding reemployment implicitly assumes some form of historical shock that led to actual
job losses. The latter assumption is difﬁcult to reconcile with the more gradual evolution of counterfeit-
ing and piracy activity observed in most sectors.
11. Maskus (2005) offers a simple partial-equilibrium model of the effects on employment and
sales in several key sectors in Lebanon, using data for 1996. However, this approach cannot determine
cross-industry equilibrium impacts and is only suggestive at best.
12. Bian and Moutinho (2009) ﬁnd a similar result from surveying consumer attitudes in
Scotland toward buying fake luxury watches.
13. This outcome was noted in survey evidence of the pricing strategy of legitimate software
producers in Asian countries as copyright enforcement improved (Maskus 2000).
14. See WIPO (2013).
15. See Fink (2013) for a discussion of how trade agreements treat intellectual property rights and
how they may affect economic welfare.
16. There are also recent attempts to employ surveys to estimate the incidence and characteristics
of counterfeit and substandard drugs. For example, Bate et al. (forthcoming) studied 1,437 samples
of Ciproﬂoxacin in 18 low-to-middle-income countries. These authors found that 9.88% of
samples contained less than 80% of the correct active ingredient, and 41.5% of these failures are coun-
terfeits. Counterfeit and substandard drugs tend to differ in two observable attributes: ﬁrst, counterfeit
drugs are more likely to mimic drugs registered with local drug safety regulators than substandard
drugs. Second, after controlling for other factors, substandard drugs are on average cheaper than
generics, whereas counterfeit drugs do not show any signiﬁcant price difference.

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