Hotelling competition and political differentiation with more than two newspapers

Stefan Behringer and Lapo Filistrucchi ()

Information Economics and Policy, 2015, vol. 30, issue C, 36-49

Abstract: We analyse a market where newspaper publishers compete for advertising as well as for readership. Publishers first choose the political position of their newspaper then set cover prices and advertising tariffs. We build on the duopoly model of Gabszewicz et al. (2001, 2002) who show that advertising financing can lead to minimum political differentiation of the newspapers and hence a lack of plurality of political views or pensée unique. We extend their model to more than two newspapers and show that, contrary popular belief in competition policy, concern for such lack of plurality may diminish but does not disappear as the number of firms increases.

Keywords: Media firms; Two sided markets; Hotelling oligopoly (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 L11 L13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:iepoli:v:30:y:2015:i:c:p:36-49

DOI: 10.1016/j.infoecopol.2014.10.004

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