Tax-free digital news?

Øystein Foros, Hans Jarle Kind and Tim Wyndham

International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2019, vol. 66, issue C, 119-136

Abstract: News platforms are struggling. Their printed readership is predominantly old, and their digital product struggles to win the attention of the young. For several decades tax reductions have been used in Europe to increase the circulation of printed newspapers. Would extending these reductions to digital platforms stimulate digital consumption? Using a two-sided pricing model where a print platform and a digital platform compete for multi-homing consumers and advertisers we show that the answer is no. The two-sidedness of the market means that the digital price would increase. Not only would digital circulation decrease but so too would the fraction of consumers that access news from both platforms. Key media policy goals of reach (circulation) and pluralism (multi-homing) would be harmed.

Keywords: Two-sided markets; Multi-homing; Digital media; Incremental pricing; Value added tax (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D11 D21 L13 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718719300396
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:indorg:v:66:y:2019:i:c:p:119-136

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijindorg.2018.05.006

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Industrial Organization is currently edited by P. Bajari, B. Caillaud and N. Gandal

More articles in International Journal of Industrial Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().