Book Prices in the UK Since the End of Resale Price Maintenance

Francis Fishwick

International Journal of the Economics of Business, 2008, vol. 15, issue 3, 359-377

Abstract: After the Net Book Agreement was abandoned in 1995 and struck down by the Restrictive Practices Court in 1997, retail book prices were widely expected to fall. Despite deeper and wider retail discounts, official indices show that book prices have subsequently risen more than general inflation. This apparent anomaly may be explained by an argument accepted at the 1962 Restrictive Practices Court hearing: that price competition would lead to concentration and greater buying power in bookselling and to bigger trade discounts from publishers, who would seek to maintain profits by raising list prices. Discounts by retailers would fail to compensate. Evidence provides some support for this explanation. While more research is required to confirm this analysis, it is relevant wherever there is debate about retention of resale price maintenance for books. It also supports the argument for case by case consideration of resale price maintenance, rather than condemnation on principle

Keywords: Resale Price Maintenance; Book Publishing; Price Indices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13571510802465120 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:ijecbs:v:15:y:2008:i:3:p:359-377

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CIJB20

DOI: 10.1080/13571510802465120

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of the Economics of Business is currently edited by Eleanor Morgan

More articles in International Journal of the Economics of Business from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().