Does software piracy mitigate poverty?: Evidence from developing and Latin America countries

Abstract of the paper:

This study analyzes the effect of usage of pirated software on poverty by using six prominent poverty indicators for the samples of developing and Latin America countries. The data utilized in models is out of balance and employ the period between 2003 and 2017. Our hypothesis asserts that increases in usage of pirated software diminish poverty in developing and Latin America countries. Firstly, univariate analyses are conducted, and the results of univariate analyses are demonstrated that there is a statistically significant opposite relationship between usage of pirated software and poverty in all six distinct poverty models. Secondly, three control variables (i.e., unemployment, health expenditure, and human capital) were included to our six poverty models to find out if the finding of univariate analyses retains its validity. The statistically significant reverse relationship between usage of pirated software and poverty remained the same after the inclusion of the three covariates. In other words, usage of pirated software maintains its negative significant effect on poverty in all models for both developing and Latin America countries samples. In consideration of the control variables, statistically significant negative coefficients were obtained for health expenditure and human capital whereas a positive coefficient was obtained for unemployment.