The First Sale Doctrine and the Digital Challenge to Public Libraries

Imke C. Reimers and Joel Waldfogel

No 30392, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Libraries have traditionally provided free communal access to books, facilitated by the first sale doctrine's (FSD) guarantee that libraries may purchase physical books at consumer prices. Increasingly restrictive ebook access terms may imperil libraries, and we compare the welfare cost of higher ebook prices to the welfare benefit of the FSD's guarantee of low physical book prices for libraries and their patrons. Using data on over 8,000 library systems for 2013-2019, we measure the impacts of physical and electronic holdings on the respective formats' circulation. We then build a structural model of the library market, and we rationalize the status quo book holdings with a librarian utility function that attaches higher weights to electronic circulation. While higher counterfactual ebook prices would induce libraries to substitute physical for electronic holdings, this would have little effect on patron CS because of consumer willingness to substitute. By contrast, higher physical book prices, as would prevail absent the first sale doctrine, reduce CS by almost ten times as much as an analogous ebook price increase.

JEL-codes: H42 L82 O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-upt
Note: ED IO LE PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30392.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:30392

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30392

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().