The market of academic journals : empirical evidence from data on French libraries

This paper analyzes the demand and cost structure of the French market of academic journals, taking into account its intermediary role between researchers, who are both producers and consumers of knowledge. This two sidedness feature echoes similar problems such as the chicken and egg problem Here readers don’t buy a journal if they do not expect its articles to be academically relevant and researchers do not submit to a journal with either limited public reach or weak reputation. After the merging of several databases, we estimate the aggregated nested logit demand system combined simultaneously with a cost function. We identify the structural parameters of this market and find that price elasticities of demand are quite large and margins relatively low, indicating that this industry experiences competitive constraints. * Université de Toulouse 1 (INRA, IDEI) and CEPR. Université de Toulouse 1 (GREMAQ). Université de Toulouse 1 (EHESS, IDEI) and CEPR.