Ownership Consolidation and Product Characteristics: A Study of the US Daily Newspaper Market
构建报纸市场结构模型，分析所有权集中对报纸价格和特征的影响，发现忽略产品特征调整会严重误判并购的福利效应。
This paper develops a structural model of newspaper markets to analyze the effects of ownership consolidation, taking into account not only firms' price adjustments but also the adjustments in newspaper characteristics. A new dataset on newspaper prices and characteristics is used to estimate the model. The paper then simulates the effect of a merger in the Minneapolis newspaper market and studies how welfare effects of mergers vary with market characteristics. It finds that ignoring adjustments of product characteristics causes substantial differences in estimated effects of mergers.