Publications

Working Paper

For many information goods, longer publication cycles are more economical, but often result in less timely - and, therefore, less valuable - information. While the digitalization of publication processes reduced fixed publication costs, making shorter publication cycles (or batches of information) more economically viable, competing firms adapted their publication cycle differently: Whereas some of them publish more frequently, others publish less frequently.

In this paper, the authors build a game-theoretic model to determine how, in a duopoly, information providers should choose their publication cycles and prices under competition. They find that when the firms are ex-ante identical, they choose different publication frequencies in equilibrium. While a reduction in the fixed cost of publication yields shorter publication cycles, it may also intensify the competitive dynamics, which lead firms to differentiate their publication cycles further, especially when information is either very ephemeral or timeless.

When publishers have access to sufficiently differentiated content, digitalization additionally creates an incentive for publishers to move toward independent publishing. Given the first-mover advantages of publishing at high frequency, our analysis informs publishers to take a proactive approach to digitalization and adapt their publication frequency accordingly.

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