Centralized Bargaining in Press Wholesale

Frank Christian May and Johannes Münster

VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: This paper studies the institutional design of newspaper and periodical wholesale. Motivated by recent developments in Germany, we compare the efficiency properties of two alternative regimes for determining the wholesale margins: collective bargaining (as practised in Germany for the last decades) on the one hand, and local bargaining (as customary in the UK and lately aspired by some German publishers) on the other. We point out several advantages of centralized bargaining: While, in the short run, local bargaining appears more attractive to publishers, it may lead to higher prices for readers and, in the long run, higher total costs of delivery.

JEL-codes: C78 L41 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:vfsc13:79984

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