Free Labor for Costly Journals

Ted Bergstrom ()

No 2001C, University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara

Abstract: Commercial publishers charge libraries about 6 times as much per page and 16 times as much per citation as nonprofit journals. The paper presents evidence that successful for profit journals are priced at several times average cost. They are able to earn "monopoly profits" despite free entry into the industry because journal reputation is the result of a kind of coordination game. The paper advocates withholding free referee services from overpriced journals.

Keywords: economics journals; information goods; pricing of academic journals; non-profit organizations; monopoly; coordination game; libraries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-03-20
Note: oai:cdlib1:
View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1145&context=ucsbecon (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Free Labor for Costly Journals? (2001)
Working Paper: Free Labor for Costly Journals? (2001)
Journal Article: Free Labour for Costly Journals? (2001)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:ucsbec:2001c

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Christopher F. Baum ().