Luis Aguiar is awarded an ERC Grant
Luis Aguiar has been awarded one of the prestigious and highly competitive European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grants for his project "Rethinking Copyright Policy in the Digital Age: Balancing Incentives for Creation and Access." His project investigates how copyright protection shapes the creation and reuse of music, movies, books and news in the digital age.
Copyright protection shapes how creative works are produced and reused, yet today’s copyright policies often reflect historical precedents rather than rigorous economic evidence. Because commercial success is hard to predict and digitization has significantly altered the incentives to produce and reuse creative content, we still know little about the optimal length and strength of copyright protection in the digital age. This project uses detailed product-level data and state-of-the-art empirical methods to measure the optimal copyright term in music, movies, and books, to examine how digital music reuse affects the visibility and value of original works, and to study how the reuse of news on social media platforms and news aggregators influences access to information. The findings will provide the evidence needed to design copyright policies that better fit today’s digital environment.
The ERC Consolidator Grant supports mid-career researchers in pursuing ambitious research projects, strengthening their research teams, and consolidating their independent careers. For more details about the 2025 award results, see the official ERC Consolidator Grants announcement