Academic journals as two-sided platforms : empirical evidence from data on french libraries

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 games console, 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. ...French Abstract : Cet article analyse la structure de la demande et des coûts du marché français des revues scientifiques. Nous estimons un "nested logit" pour le modèle de demande et identifions les paramètres structurels de ce marché. Nous trouvons que les élasticités prix de la demande sont assez grandes et les marges relativement faibles ce qui indique que cette industrie est relativement concurrentielle.