This paper analyzes the demand and cost structure of the French market of academic journals, taking into account its intermediary role between researchers, who are both producers and consumers of knowledge. This two sidedness feature will echoes similar problems already observed in electronic markets - payment card systems, video game consoles, etc. - such as the chicken and egg problem, where readers won’t buy a journal if they do not expect its articles to be academically relevant and researchers, that live under the mantra 'Publish or Perish', will not submit to a journal with either limited public reach or weak reputation. After the merging of several databases, we estimate the aggregated nested logit demand system combined simultaneously with a cost function. We identify the structural parameters of this market and find that price elasticities of demand are quite large and margins relatively low, indicating that this industry experiences competitive constraints.
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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number
5990.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Jean-Charles Rochet Author-Email: rochet@cict.fr Author-Workplace-Name: IDEI, University of Toulouse & Jean Tirole Author-Email: tirole@cict.fr Author-Workplace-Name: IDEI, University of Toulouse, 2006.
"Two-Sided Markets: A Progress Report,"
RAND Journal of Economics,
The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 645-667, Autumn.