Monopoly Power in the Eighteenth Century British Book Trade

David Fielding and Shef Rogers ()
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Shef Rogers: Department of English and Linguistics, University of Otago, New Zealand

No 1410, Working Papers from University of Otago, Department of Economics

Abstract: In conventional wisdom, the reform of British copyright law during the eighteenth century brought an end to the monopoly on the sale of books held by the Stationers’ Company, and the resulting competition was one of the driving forces behind the expansion of British book production during the Enlightenment. In this paper, we analyze a new dataset on eighteenth century book prices and author payments, showing that the legal reform brought about only a temporary increase in competition. The data suggest that by the end of the century, informal collusion between publishers had replaced the legal monopoly powers in place at the beginning of the century. The monopoly power of retailers is not so easily undermined.

Keywords: book trade; publishing; copyright; retail monopoly (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D42 L12 N83 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2014-12, Revised 2014-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-cul, nep-his and nep-hme
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http://www.otago.ac.nz/economics/otago087299.pdf First version, 2014 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:otg:wpaper:1410

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