Newspaper Joint Operating Agreements (JOAs) are long term, inflexible contracts between metropolitan daily newspapers in the same market. These contracts maintain two editorial voices while combining all business operations of the two competitors in order to capture many of the scale economies...

Does editorial competition boost newspaper circulation? If metropolitan daily newspapers constitute relevant product and geographic markets, then competition should foster improved quality and offer readers products that are differentiated in some dimensions and thus should result in higher...

Conventional wisdom argues that all commercial and economic competition between two daily newspapers stops when they merge their advertising and printing capabilities to form a joint operating agreement (JOA). Clearly the JOA acts a monopolist in the sale of advertising, but there are two forces...