Artistic Creation and Intellectual Property: A Professional Career Approach

Reaching high levels of artistic creation in a society requires institutions that facilitate the sorting of the most talented individuals of each generation and the development of their skills throughout the artistic career. The impact of long copyrights is not straightforward in this respect. This paper takes a professional career approach to analyzing how copyright regulation affects artistic creation. It does so within an overlapping-generations model of artists. Long copyrights increase superstar market concentration and can reduce the number of young artists being able to pursue artistic careers. As a result, in the long run, excessively long copyrights can reduce artistic creation, the average talent of artists, and social welfare.