Software piracy: A time-series Analysis

Software piracy is a global problem that costs businesses billions of dollars each year. This study presents the first time series analysis looking at what influences software piracy. It includes data for 85 countries associating economic, cultural, and temporal variables with national software piracy rates. Some of the variables included coincide with those in previous studies (GDP, collectivism and power indexes) while others are new to this study (time, high tech exports, IT expenditures). The results show that the aforementioned variables are significantly associated with software piracy rates and that more specific influences can be investigated by looking at breakpoints in GDP. This knowledge is important to several areas both within and outside academia such as future policy formation aimed at curbing software piracy, the creation of preventive and deterrent controls for software piracy, and future research of the phenomenon discussed.