Report Type: End of Award Report
Full Name: Christos Genakos Faculty/Department: Cambridge Judge Business School
Project Title: The Impact of Price Regulation on Prices and Variety in the Italian Book Market Project
Start Date: Sun, 01/09/2019 Project
End Date: Wed, 01/06/2022
Project Abstract: Fixed book price (FBP) agreement is a form of resale price maintenance commonly applied to books in various EU countries and one of the most hotly debated regulations. FBP stipulates that the retail price of books is set, not by the retailer, but by the publisher of the book. By restricting retail price competition FBP’s main objective is to promote book production variety. Yet, despite its popularity and application in many countries, there is no empirical evidence on its effects. Our research aim is to provide the first systematic evidence on the impact of FBP on book variety and prices using a detailed new dataset from Italy. Activities and Achievement: The research is still ongoing.
Dissemination: I presented preliminary findings at a Workshop on the Economics of Fixed Book Price (FBP) Systems at Giessen University.
Outputs: We have not finished yet.
Major Difficulties and Any Other Issues: The major obstacle was the fact that the change in regulation took place exactly at the same time in the whole of Italy and we needed to purchase additional data from Switzerland in order to use it as a control group.
Declaration: This award has not yet produced any relevant outputs, but details of any future publications will be submitted to the CERF database as soon as they become available
