Economics of Media Content - Allocative Efficiency and Equality of Social Opportunities

Welcome to Medieninhalte.de ("media content")!

The purpose of this website is to facilitate and advance the discussion of the Economics of Media Content and the method of Collective Pricing of Differentiated Goods as described in Dietmar Detering's doctoral thesis. Please direct all comments, suggestions, and critique to the author.

So far, the draft of an article describing the Collective Pricing of Differentiated Goods is the only English document available on this site. Because of the expressed interest of non-German speakers in this topic, sponsors for the translation are highly welcome. They are also welcome for improvements and promotions of this site.

If you understand German, the table of contents offers you direct access to the complete doctoral thesis. You might also be interested in using the search to find keywords and topics of interest for you on this site.

The German print edition of the thesis has been published by Lit Verlag (Münster, 2001) but it is out of print now.

Ökonomie der Medieninhalte - Allokative Effizienz und soziale Chancengleichheit in den Neuen Medien

Eine wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Abhandlung über Versagen am Markt für Medieninhalte und Entwicklung eines Lösungsvorschlages.

By Dr. Dietmar Detering

What are the economic foundations of the conflicts surrounding the distribution of media content on the internet? Isn't the production and distribution of texts, music, video & Co. subject to the same laws as the one of material goods? Which changes do the New Media introduce to the market for media content? For the first time, "Ökonomie der Medieninhalte" offers a comprehensive representation of the economic characteristics of copyrighted works. A main characteristic is that the copyright owners exclude many potential users simply by charging a price although those users would not cause any additional costs. Moreover, the author succeeds with methods of the field industrial economics to proof that the producers of media content are subject to considerable misincentives at the present market. The solution presented by this work is a method to achieve perfect price discrimination. For the first, this method guarantees that all authors receive an economically optimal compensation for their works and that all users acquire the rights to use any existing content.

Bibliographic Information:

Detering, Dietmar. 2001. Ökonomie der Medieninhalte. Allokative Effizienz und soziale Chancengleichheit in den Neuen Medien. Herausgegeben von Klaus Backhaus, Heinz-Lothar Grob, Bernd Holznagel, Wolfram-Manfred Lippe und Gerhard W. Wittkämper. Telekommunikation und Multimedia. Band 6. Münster: LIT. Zugl.: Münster (Westf.), Univ., Diss., 1999.