Indeed, open-source production differs in important ways from spot-market interaction and production within the private firm. The characteristics of information as an economic good high fixed costs and low marginal costs the ability to be consumed without exhaustion the difficulty of excluding free-riderssupport the widespread use of commons-based peer production.īenkler proposes social production as an alternative to the traditional organizational modes of market and hierarchy, in Oliver Williamsons terminology. Margoliss Winners, Losers, and Microsoft: Competition and Antitrust in High Technology (Oakland, Calif.: Independent Institute, 1999), and other works, but Benklers treatment is nevertheless insightful, intelligent, and engaging.

Varians Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1998), Stan J. This is well-trod ground, having been explored in detail in Carl Shapiro and Hal R. The first deals with the economics of the networked information economy. The Wealth of Networks is divided into three main parts. Hayeks concept of the market as generator and transmitter of knowledge, though Hayek does not figure prominently in the book.) (Some readers will immediately think of F. Commons-based peer production is characterized by weak property rights, an emphasis on intrinsic rather than extrinsic (monetary) rewards, and the exploitation of dispersed, tacit knowledge. Peer production involves the creation and dissemination of user-generated content, including the online Wikipedia encyclopedia and open-source software, such as Linux, that allow users to generate their own entries and modify those created by others. In particular, the past few years have seen the rise of social production, a radically decentralized, distributed mode of interaction that Benkler calls commons-based peer production.

The new information and communications technologies do not simply make the old ways of doing things more efficient, but also support fundamentally new ways of doing things. He argues that the digital revolution is more revolutionary than has been recognized, even by its most passionate defenders. Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at the Harvard Law School, is a leading authority on the law, economics, and politics of networks, innovation, intellectual property, and the Internet, and he puts his wide knowledge and deep understanding to good use. Yochai Benklers The Wealth of Networks is a comprehensive, informative, and challenging meditation on the rise of the networked information economy and its implications for society, politics, and culture. Single Issues of The Independent Review.

Podcast: Independent Outlook / Conversations.

International Economics and Development.

The wealth of networks