how bad is music file sharing? – part 3

Boorstin (2004) tested the causality between Internet access and CD sales over the years 1998, 2000, and 2001 using an economic model based on 99 U.S. metropolitan areas. Since Boostin could not directly measure Internet “piracy”, he broke down “(…) the population into different age groups in order to see how Internet access changes the predicted effect of each age group on CD sales.” (Boorstin 2004: 46). He then hypothesizes that “[i]f the effect of file sharing on CD sales is negative for all age groups, I expect the effect of Internet access on CD sales to be negative for all age groups” (Boorstin 2004:47). However, he also admitted that there are good reasons that the effects are not the same for different groups. It can be assumed that the substitution effect is higher for youths than for adults, whereas the sampling effect is stronger for adults than for youths. Therefore, he expected a more negative effect of Internet access on CD sales for youths than for adults.

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