IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/acb/cbeeco/2013-612.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the uniform pricing puzzle in recorded music

Author

Listed:
  • Martin Richardson
  • Frank Stahler

Abstract

This paper proposes a possible explanation for uniform pricing in the recorded music industry, based on a pooling equilibrium across different quality types. We show that an ex ante ability to invest in the probability of success - which we identify with record companies' A&R expenditures - makes such a pooling equilibrium more likely.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin Richardson & Frank Stahler, 2013. "On the uniform pricing puzzle in recorded music," ANU Working Papers in Economics and Econometrics 2013-612, Australian National University, College of Business and Economics, School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2013-612
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cbe.anu.edu.au/researchpapers/econ/wp612.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    2. Judith A. Chevalier & Anil K. Kashyap & Peter E. Rossi, 2003. "Why Don't Prices Rise During Periods of Peak Demand? Evidence from Scanner Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 15-37, March.
    3. Barak Orbach, "undated". "Antitrust and Pricing in the Motion Picture Industry," University of Michigan John M. Olin Center for Law & Economics Working Paper Series umichlwps-1009, University of Michigan John M. Olin Center for Law & Economics.
    4. Kreps, David M. & Wilson, Robert, 1982. "Reputation and imperfect information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 253-279, August.
    5. Richardson, Martin & Stähler, Frank, 2016. "On the “uniform pricing puzzle” in recorded music," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 58-66.
    6. Hao Zhao, 2000. "Raising Awareness and Signaling Quality to Uninformed Consumers: A Price-Advertising Model," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(4), pages 390-396, January.
    7. Gong, Jiong & Li, Jianpei & McAfee, R. Preston, 2012. "Split-award contracts with investment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 188-197.
    8. Yannis Bakos & Erik Brynjolfsson, 1999. "Bundling Information Goods: Pricing, Profits, and Efficiency," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 45(12), pages 1613-1630, December.
    9. William James Adams & Janet L. Yellen, 1976. "Commodity Bundling and the Burden of Monopoly," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 90(3), pages 475-498.
    10. Ben Shiller & Joel Waldfogel, 2011. "Music for a Song: An Empirical Look at Uniform Pricing and Its Alternatives," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(4), pages 630-660, December.
    11. Hengjie Ai & Rui Li, 2012. "Moral hazard, investment, and firm dynamics," FRB Atlanta CQER Working Paper 2012-01, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    12. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1986. "Price and Advertising Signals of Product Quality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 796-821, August.
    13. Orbach, Barak Y. & Einav, Liran, 2007. "Uniform prices for differentiated goods: The case of the movie-theater industry," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 129-153.
    14. R. Preston McAfee & John McMillan & Michael D. Whinston, 1989. "Multiproduct Monopoly, Commodity Bundling, and Correlation of Values," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 104(2), pages 371-383.
    15. Hadhek Zouhaier & Kefi Mohamed Karim, 2012. "Democracy, Investment and Economic Growth," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 2(3), pages 233-240.
    16. Guohua Jiang & Donglin Li & Gang Li, 2012. "Capital investment and momentum strategies," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 165-188, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Richardson, Martin & Stähler, Frank, 2016. "On the “uniform pricing puzzle” in recorded music," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 58-66.
    2. Pascal Courty & Javad Nasiry, 2018. "Loss aversion and the uniform pricing puzzle for media and entertainment products," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 66(1), pages 105-140, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yong Chao & Timothy Derdenger, 2013. "Mixed Bundling in Two-Sided Markets in the Presence of Installed Base Effects," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(8), pages 1904-1926, August.
    2. Belleflamme,Paul & Peitz,Martin, 2015. "Industrial Organization," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107687899.
    3. Kuroda, Toshifumi, 2014. "Bundling information goods under 'breakeven' price," 20th ITS Biennial Conference, Rio de Janeiro 2014: The Net and the Internet - Emerging Markets and Policies 106869, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    4. Vaubourg, Anne-Gael, 2006. "Differentiation and discrimination in a duopoly with two bundles," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(4), pages 753-762, July.
    5. Stefano Galavotti, 2014. "Reducing Inefficiency in Public Good Provision Through Linking," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 16(3), pages 427-466, June.
    6. Saeed Alaei & Ali Makhdoumi & Azarakhsh Malekian & Saša Pekeč, 2022. "Revenue-Sharing Allocation Strategies for Two-Sided Media Platforms: Pro-Rata vs. User-Centric," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(12), pages 8699-8721, December.
    7. Roesler, Anne-Katrin & Deb, Rahul, 2021. "Multi-Dimensional Screening: Buyer-Optimal Learning and Informational Robustness," CEPR Discussion Papers 16206, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    8. Hernando, Andres & Villena, Mauricio & Apablaza, Valentina, 2023. "Optimal Bidding for a Bundle of Power Transmission Infrastructure Works," MPRA Paper 120849, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 30 Apr 2024.
    9. Jihui Chen & Qiang Fu, 2017. "Do exclusivity arrangements harm consumers?," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 311-339, June.
    10. Li, Minqiang & Feng, Haiyang & Chen, Fuzan & Kou, Jisong, 2013. "Numerical investigation on mixed bundling and pricing of information products," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 560-571.
    11. Ritwik Raj & Mark H. Karwan & Chase Murray & Lei Sun, 2022. "Itemized pricing in B2B bundles with diminishing reservation prices and loss averse customers," Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 21(4), pages 375-392, August.
    12. Stole, Lars A., 2007. "Price Discrimination and Competition," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 2221-2299, Elsevier.
    13. Yi Qian & Qiang Gong & Yuxin Chen, 2015. "Untangling Searchable and Experiential Quality Responses to Counterfeits," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(4), pages 522-538, July.
    14. Kuroda, Toshifumi & Ida, Takanori & Koguchi, Teppei, 2015. "The impact of asymmetric regulation on product bundling: The case of fixed broadband and mobile communications in Japan," 2015 Regional ITS Conference, Los Angeles 2015 146318, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    15. Chun‐Hui Miao, 2010. "Tying, Compatibility And Planned Obsolescence," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(3), pages 579-606, September.
    16. Jeanine Miklós-Thal, 2012. "Linking reputations through umbrella branding," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 335-374, September.
    17. Dennis W. Carlton & Michael Waldman, 2014. "Robert Bork's Contributions to Antitrust Perspectives on Tying Behavior," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 57(S3), pages 121-144.
    18. Jianyu Yu & Zohra Bouamra-Mechemache & Angelo Zago, 2018. "What is in a Name? Information, Heterogeneity, and Quality in a Theory of Nested Names," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 100(1), pages 286-310.
    19. Hanming Fang & Peter Norman, 2010. "Optimal Provision of Multiple Excludable Public Goods," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 1-37, November.
    20. Anja Lambrecht & Katja Seim & Naufel Vilcassim & Amar Cheema & Yuxin Chen & Gregory Crawford & Kartik Hosanagar & Raghuram Iyengar & Oded Koenigsberg & Robin Lee & Eugenio Miravete & Ozge Sahin, 2012. "Price discrimination in service industries," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 423-438, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General
    • L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • M21 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Economics - - - Business Economics
    • Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:acb:cbeeco:2013-612. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feanuau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.