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Many countries levy reduced-rate indirect taxes on newspapers, with proclaimed policy goals of stimulating investment in journalism and ensuring low newspaper prices. However, by taking into account the fact that the media industry operates in two-sided markets, we find the paradoxical result that the consequences of a low-tax regime might be quite the opposite; low investments and high prices. We also show that the low-tax regime tends to increase newspaper differentiation. If the advertising market is relatively small, the newspapers might invest too little in journalism and be too differentiated from a social point of view. In this case a tax increase will be welfare-enhancing.

The TV industry is a two-sided market where both advertisers and viewers buy access to the programs offered by competing TV channels. Under the current market structure advertising prices are typically set by TV channels while viewer prices are set by distributors (e.g. cable operators). The latter implies that the distributors partly internalize the competition between the TV channels, since they take into account the fact that a lower viewer price at one channel will harm rival channels. We nonetheless find that a shift to a market structure where both advertising prices and viewer prices are set competitively by the TV channels might increase joint industry profits. The reason is that this market structure, in contrast to the one we observe today, directly addresses the two-sidedness of the market. We also show that this is to the benefit for the viewers.

The purpose of this article is to analyze how competitive forces may influence the way media firms like TV channels raise revenue. A media firm can either be financed by advertising revenue, by direct payment from the viewers (or the readers, if we consider newspapers), or by both. We show that the scope for raising revenues from consumer payment is constrained by other media firms offering close substitutes. This implies that the less differentiated the media firms' content, the larger is the fraction of their revenue coming from advertising. A media firm's scope for raising revenues from ads, on the other hand, is constrained by how many competitors it faces. We should thus expect that direct payment from the media consumers becomes more important the larger the number of competing media products.

This paper examines the efficient provision of goods in two-sided markets and characterizes optimal specific and ad-valorem taxes. We show that (i) a monopoly may have too high output compared to the social optimum; (ii) output may be reduced by imposing negative value-added taxes (subsidy) or positive specific taxes.

Slotting allowances are fees paid by manufacturers to get access to retailers' shelf space. Both in the USA and Europe, the use of slotting allowances has attracted attention in the general press as well as among policy makers and economists. One school of thought claims that slotting allowances are efficiency enhancing, while another school of thought maintains that slotting allowances are used in an anti-competitive manner. In this paper, we argue that this controversy is partially caused by inadequate assumptions of how the retail market is structured and organized. Using a formal model, we show that there are good reasons to expect anti-competitive effects of slotting allowances. We further point out that competition authorities tend to use an unsatisfactory basis for comparison when analyzing welfare consequences of slotting allowances.

The agency model used by Apple and other digital platforms delegates retail‐pricing decisions to upstream content providers subject to a fixed revenue‐sharing rule. Given competition both upstream and downstream, we consider how, under the agency model, retail prices depend on the firms' revenue‐sharing splits and the degrees to which consumers view the platforms and the goods sold on the platforms to be substitutes. We show that the agency model may not be universally adopted even if adoption would mean higher profits for all firms. Use of most‐favored‐nation clauses in these settings can ensure industry‐wide adoption and increase retail prices.