In cultural markets, for books, music or movies, sales are concentrated on a small number of highly successful products. One explanation for the skewness of sales is incomplete information: consumers are poorly informed about most products, because only a small proportion of them are visible and...

In this paper we propose a model of competition between a private television channel, financed by advertising, and a public channel, financed by advertising and a transfer of public funds. We study the impact that an advertising quota imposed on the public channel has on the channels and on the...

In this paper, we focus on recorded music gifts during the holiday season and estimate the reduction in deadweight loss due to the transition from physical CD gift-giving to digital music gift-giving with gift cards. Based on our survey data, we find that music CD gifts generate an average...

In 2007 a prominent British alternative-rock band, Radiohead, pre-released its album In Rainbows online, and asked their fans to "pick-their-own-price" (PYOP) for the digital download. The offer was available for three months, after which the band released and commercialized the album, both...

This paper analyzes the impact of online customer reviews on purchasing decisions and the influence of online customer or peer reviews compared to other channels of information such as offline press (expert reviews) and trial versions (personal reviews). Using 7,024 answers of an anonymous...

A new type of contractual arrangement in the music industry – the so-called “360-degree” or “equity” deal – allows a firm (e.g., a record label) to manage all of an artist’s activities, such as sales of recorded music, touring, merchandising, etc. Since these contracts internalize...

In 2007 a prominent British alternative-rock band, Radiohead, pre-released its album In Rainbows online, and asked their fans to "pick-their-own-price" (PYOP) for the digital download. The offer was available for three months, after which the band released and commercialized the album, both...

In this paper we propose a model which shows that the impact of copyright infringement on music artists depends on the type of revenue that they receive (royalties from record companies, profits for self-released artists, revenues from live concerts). We then test the hypotheses derived from the...

This paper analyzes the impact of music file sharing on CD purchases. Traditionally, two arguments are opposed concerning the impact of music file sharing on CD sales. On the one hand, MP3 downloads only reduces sales of legitimate CDs (the competition effect). On the other hand, consumption of...

This paper analyzes the impact of music file sharing on CD purchases. Traditionally, two arguments are opposed concerning the impact of music file sharing on CD sales. On the one hand, MP3 downloads only reduces sales of legitimate CDs (the "competition effect"). On the other hand, consumption...