In this paper, we analyze the equilibrium amount of entertainment in news coverage of newspapers and television stations. We find that a shift in the inclination to read, expressed by a shift in the (psychological) distance costs, induces both media outlets to incorporate more entertaining...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how digitalization affects pricing and private copy protection in contents industries. Digitalization enables content providers and online retailers to implement copy protection at different stages of creation and distribution of contents. We construct a...

The role of media – whether television, newspapers, radio, or the Internet – in supplying the ideas that shape our viewpoints and cultures is such that the dangers that may accompany concentrations of ownership in this sector are well recognized. Ownership patterns affect not only pluralism,...

This paper provides an empirical examination of third-degree price discrimination in the Swedish newspaper industry. The results show that price discrimination is more prevalent in competitive markets and among newspapers with low market shares. This supports predictions from recent theoretical...

We examine cost-reducing investment in vertically-related oligopolies, where firms may be vertically integrated or separated. Analyzing a standard linear Cournot model, we show that: (i) Integrated firms invest more than separated competitors. (ii) Vertical integration increases own investment...

We examine vertical backward integration in a reducedform model of successive oligopolies. Our key findings are: (i) There may be asymmetric equilibria where some firms integrate and others remain separated, even if firms are symmetric initially; (ii) Efficient firms are more likely to integrate...

We compare different methods to assess unilateral merger effects in a two-sided market by applying them to a hypothetical merger in the Dutch newspaper industry. For this, we first specify and estimate a structural model of demand for differentiated products on both the readership and the...

Although revenue for recorded music has collapsed since the explosion of file sharing, results elsewhere suggest that the quality of new music has not suffered. One possible explanation is that digitization has allowed a wider range of firms to bring far more music to market using lower-cost...

In Japan, TV platforms regulate themselves as to the length of the advertisements they air. Using modified Hotelling models, we investigate whether such self-regulation improves consumer and social welfare or not. When all consumers choose a single TV program (the utility functions of consumers...