Bundling Electronic Journals and Competition among Publishers
分析电子期刊捆绑销售如何影响定价，发现捆绑虽增加出版商利润但降低社会福利，且禁止捆绑时行业集中度不影响价格。
Site licensing of e-journals has been revolutionizing the way academic information is distributed. However, many librarians are concerned about the possibility that publishers might abuse site licensing by practicing bundling. In this paper, we analyze how bundling affects journal pricing in the market of scientific, technical and medical (STM) electronic journals and offer a novel insight on the bundling of a large number of information goods. We find that (i) when bundling is prohibited, surprisingly, industry concentration does not affect prices (ii) when bundling is allowed, each publisher finds bundling optimal and bundling increases the industry profit while reducing social welfare and (iii) any asymmetry-increasing merger is profitable but reduces social welfare.