A survey on software piracy empirical literature: Stylized facts and theory

As software is central in today's world, the problem of software piracy is of increasing importance. It reduces the revenues of firms that develop new software and, therefore, it may hinder innovation and growth. To understand better the causes of this phenomenon this paper presents a survey of the empirical literature regarding software piracy and discusses if the findings are coherent with the theoretical literature. Overall we are able to identify eight stylized facts in five dimensions: the Economic, Cultural, Educational, Technological and Legal. Moreover we argue that most of these findings are coherent with that which the theoretical models imply.