Working Paper: NBER ID: w10120
Authors: Fiona Scott Morton; Sharon Oster
Abstract: Using data from American magazines, we explore the relationship between subscription discounts and magazine characteristics. We focus in particular on those magazine features that might lead time-inconsistent consumers to wish to engage in commitment behavior. We find that for magazines whose payoff is in the future and/or that are meritorious for other reasons, subscription discounts are lower all else equal. This finding suggests that publishers may be able to set subscription prices in order to extract rents from consumers' willingness to tie their own hands in terms of their future reading.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: L1; L2
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Consumer time-inconsistency issues (D15) | Pricing strategy (D49) |
| Magazine characteristics (Y90) | Subscription discounts (L42) |
| Magazine characteristics (Y90) | Subscription price relative to newsstand prices (P22) |
| Non-investment genre (G19) | Subscription price relative to newsstand prices (P22) |