The benefits of advanced information and communication services are increasingly dependent on the quality of the available connectivity. This paper examines the factors that influence the quality of fixed and mobile broadband access in OECD countries. Drawing on institutional economics, the...

Commercial ceilings not only restrict broadcasters in their decisions about commercial broadcasting time, but also affect their differentiation of program content. This study examines the welfare effects of commercial ceilings in a two-sided free-to-air TV market, taking into account welfare...

A welfare-maximizing Public Service Broadcaster (PSB) broadcasts both information-type and show-type content if (i) the information consumption of TV viewers generates external benefits for society by improving the ability of voters to control politicians and (ii) the marginal external benefits...

This paper studies the institutional design of newspaper and periodical wholesale. Motivated by recent developments in Germany, we compare the efficiency properties of two alternative regimes for determining the wholesale margins: collective bargaining (as practised in Germany for the last...

This paper develops a fairly general model of platform competition in media markets allowing viewers to use multiple platforms. This leads to a new form of competition between platforms, in which they do not steal viewers from each other, but affect the viewer composition and thereby the...

How far can media undermine democratic institutions and how persuasive can it be in assuring public support for dictator policies? We study this question in the context of Germany before World War II, between 1929 and 1939. First, we estimate the impact of radio signal on voting for the Nazi...

In this paper we make use of a quasi-experiment in the market for illegal downloading to study movie box office revenues. Exogenous variation comes from the unexpected shutdown of the popular file hosting platform Megaupload.com on January 19, 2012. The estimation strategy is based on a quasi...

The emergence of smart TV device encourages the reconsideration of the customer’s subscription on the pay TV so that the phenomenon of cord-cutting evokes the other dimension of MVPD (Multi-Channel Video Programming Distribution) industry itself. Two major paths to adopt the new platform in...

Bundling under monopoly tends to increase demand and market efficiency, but likely at the expense of transferring consumers' surplus to firms. Public utilities can use this increase in demand to reduce the monthly fee per consumer. To demonstrate it, I conduct a numerical analysis of the effects...

Sampling poses an interesting problem in markets with experience goods. On the one hand, free samples reveal product quality and help consumers to make informed purchase decisions (promotional effect). On the other hand, sampling may induce consumers to substitute purchases with free consumption...