IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/jincot/v14y2014i2p145-157.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does New Information Technology Lower Media Quality? The Paradox of Commercial Public Goods

Author

Listed:
  • Man-Lui Lau
  • Bruce Wydick

Abstract

We define commercial public goods as goods that are broadcast via television, radio, newsprint, or websites for which consumption is non-rival and non-exclusive, and revenue is generated mainly through advertising alongside a product in a two-sided market. With new information technology the fixed cost of entry in these markets has substantially declined. We demonstrate that as fixed costs of entry decline in a competitive media market, lower industry concentration results in lower resources to each firm for the production of commercial public goods. The counterintuitive result of new information technology is that it may result in lower quality news reporting and a less-informed population. The result may hold even when consumers exhibit preferences for diversity in media outlets. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Man-Lui Lau & Bruce Wydick, 2014. "Does New Information Technology Lower Media Quality? The Paradox of Commercial Public Goods," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 145-157, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jincot:v:14:y:2014:i:2:p:145-157
    DOI: 10.1007/s10842-013-0157-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10842-013-0157-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10842-013-0157-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simon P. Anderson & Stephen Coate, 2000. "Market Provision of Public Goods: The Case of Broadcasting," NBER Working Papers 7513, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Jean-Charles Rochet & Jean Tirole, 2003. "Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(4), pages 990-1029, June.
    3. Frijters Paul & Velamuri Malathi, 2010. "Is the Internet Bad News? The Online News Era and the Market for High-Quality News," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(2), pages 1-33, June.
    4. Anderson, Simon P. & Gabszewicz, Jean J., 2006. "The Media and Advertising: A Tale of Two-Sided Markets," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 567-614, Elsevier.
    5. Michael Spence & Bruce Owen, 1977. "Television Programming, Monopolistic Competition, and Welfare," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 91(1), pages 103-126.
    6. Hans Jarle Kind & Tore Nilssen & Lars Sørgard, 2007. "Competition for Viewers and Advertisers in a TV Oligopoly," Journal of Media Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 211-233.
    7. Peter O. Steiner, 1952. "Program Patterns and Preferences, and the Workability of Competition in Radio Broadcasting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 66(2), pages 194-223.
    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. Le Lin & Ke Liao & Deren Xie, 2023. "When Investors Speak, Do Firms Listen? The Role of Investors' Dividend‐related Complaints from Online Earnings Communication Conferences," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 59(1), pages 32-75, March.
    2. Gregory S. Miller & Douglas J. Skinner, 2015. "The Evolving Disclosure Landscape: How Changes in Technology, the Media, and Capital Markets Are Affecting Disclosure," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 221-239, May.

    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. Hans Jarle Kind & Tore Nilssen & Lars Sørgard, 2010. "Price Coordination in Two-Sided Markets: Competition in the TV Industry," CESifo Working Paper Series 3004, CESifo.
    2. Marco Antonielli & Lapo Filistrucchi, 2011. "Collusion and the political differentiation of newspapers," Working Papers 11-26, NET Institute, revised Nov 2011.
    3. Hans Jarle Kind & Tore Nilssen & Lars Sørgard, 2009. "Business Models for Media Firms: Does Competition Matter for How They Raise Revenue?," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(6), pages 1112-1128, 11-12.
    4. Attila Ambrus & Emilio Calvano & Markus Reisinger, 2016. "Either or Both Competition: A "Two-Sided" Theory of Advertising with Overlapping Viewerships," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(3), pages 189-222, August.
    5. Shekhar, Shiva, 2020. "Zero Pricing Platform Competition," MPRA Paper 99364, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Hans Jarle Kind & Tore Nilssen & Lars Sørgard, 2007. "Competition for Viewers and Advertisers in a TV Oligopoly," Journal of Media Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 20(3), pages 211-233.
    7. Simon P. Anderson & Stephen Coate, 2005. "Market Provision of Broadcasting: A Welfare Analysis," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(4), pages 947-972.
    8. Anderson, Simon P. & Gabszewicz, Jean J., 2006. "The Media and Advertising: A Tale of Two-Sided Markets," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 567-614, Elsevier.
    9. Lapo Filistrucchi & Andrea Mangani & Luigi Luini, 2012. "Banning Ads from Prime-Time State TV: Lessons from France," Working Papers 12-23, NET Institute.
    10. Kind, Hans Jarle & Nilssen, Tore & Sørgard, Lars, 2016. "Inter-firm price coordination in a two-sided market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 101-112.
    11. Behringer, Stefan & Filistrucchi, Lapo, 2015. "Hotelling competition and political differentiation with more than two newspapers," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 36-49.
    12. Monic Sun & Feng Zhu, 2011. "Ad Revenue and Content Commercialization: Evidence from Blogs," Working Papers 11-32, NET Institute.
    13. Susanne Kremhelmer & Hans Zenger, 2004. "Advertising and the Media," Industrial Organization 0403003, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Reisinger, Markus, 2012. "Platform competition for advertisers and users in media markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 243-252.
    15. Lin Panlang, 2011. "Market Provision of Program Quality in the Television Broadcasting Industry," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 11(1), pages 1-22, March.
    16. Peitz, Martin & Valletti, Tommaso M., 2008. "Content and advertising in the media: Pay-tv versus free-to-air," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 949-965, July.
    17. Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Feng Zhu, 2010. "Strategies to Fight Ad-Sponsored Rivals," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(9), pages 1484-1499, September.
    18. Kremhelmer, Susanne, 2004. "Fairness, Property Rights, and the Market for Media," Munich Dissertations in Economics 2521, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    19. Roberto Roson, 2008. "Price Discrimination and Audience Composition in Advertising-Based Broadcasting," Journal of Media Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(4), pages 234-257.
    20. Simon P. Anderson & Bruno Jullien, 2015. "The advertising-financed business model in two-sided media markets," Post-Print hal-02866192, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Commercial public goods; New media; Information technology; L10; L15; L82; O30;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality
    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • O30 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - General

    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:kap:jincot:v:14:y:2014:i:2:p:145-157. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://springer.com .

    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.