Economic Effects of Media Concentration: Estimates from a Model of the Newspaper Firm.

摘要

The paper specifies a five-equation model of newspaper operations and estimates the model with data drawn from a sample of 129 newspaper firms. On the cost side, it confirms the well-known fact that there are significant scale economies in the production of circulation and news. However, it does not find any evidence that chain newspapers can produce output more efficiently than independents, all things equal. On the demand side, it finds that newspapers located in contiguous geographic markets appear to have an important competitive effect on the demand for circulation. However, it could not reject the hypothesis that broadcast stations do not affect the demand for newspaper advertising and circulation.