Preference Externalities in Media Markets

Simon Anderson and Joel Waldfogel

No 10835, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Media industries typically exhibit two fundamental features, high fixed costs and heterogeneity of consumer preferences. Daily newspaper markets, for example, tend to support a single product. In other examples, such as radio broadcasting, markets often support multiple differentiated offerings. Both contexts can deliver preference externalities, when the options and well-being for consumers depend on the number and mix of consumers according to their content preferences. This chapter presents evidence on these fundamental features of media markets. We then incorporate these features into a suite of theoretical models to obtain both a description of media markets as well as predictions for how they would be expected to function. In a third section we turn to ?results,? i.e. empirical evidence on the questions illuminated by the theoretical models. We then explore the effects of technological change, and we suggest directions for future work.

Keywords: Preference externalities; Media markets; Differentiation; Entry; Broadcasting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-cul
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10835 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10835

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP10835
orders@cepr.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (repec@cepr.org).