Academic Journals as Two-Sided Platforms: Empirical Evidence from Data on French Libraries

Pierre Dubois (), Hernandez-Perez, Adriana and Marc IVALDI ()

No 5990, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper analyzes the demand and cost structure of the French market of academic journals, taking into account its intermediary role between researchers, who are both producers and consumers of knowledge. This two sidedness feature will echoes similar problems already observed in electronic markets - payment card systems, video game consoles, etc. - such as the chicken and egg problem, where readers won’t buy a journal if they do not expect its articles to be academically relevant and researchers, that live under the mantra 'Publish or Perish', will not submit to a journal with either limited public reach or weak reputation. After the merging of several databases, we estimate the aggregated nested logit demand system combined simultaneously with a cost function. We identify the structural parameters of this market and find that price elasticities of demand are quite large and margins relatively low, indicating that this industry experiences competitive constraints.

Keywords: differentiated products models; media industry; two-sided platforms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L11 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-dcm, nep-knm, nep-mic, nep-mkt, nep-net and nep-sog
Date: 2006-12
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Working Paper: Academic journals as two-sided platforms: empirical evidence from data on french libraries (2006)
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