4 ms·
> "Why is the market failing?" There's an easier answer to this question: because it's not a "market". There is no part of this whose pieces are fungible. No
by blahedo 15y ago
> "Why is the market failing?"
There's an easier answer to this question: because it's not a "market". There is no part of this whose pieces are fungible. Not the researchers, not the ideas, not the papers, not the journals. For "the market" to do its thing (to the extent that we can even say that), it requires the goods for sale or the people providing the services to be substitutable and commodified. That isn't (and pretty much can't) be true of academic publishing.
- mathattack 15y agoThank you for the comments. I appreciate your insights as an academic living through this. Even still, I have to respectfully disagree. I'll grant that the economics in most textbooks starts with the assumption of homogenous buyers and sellers. Economists have found ways of breaking down this assumption without giving up the concept of a market. Granted you lose "Perfect competition" but that's ok. Let's look at an analogy... Rather than academics, let's talk about programmers. There is as much variety in programmer performance as senior faculty performance. The firms that hire these programmers have not been able to create a monopoly. Yes - Google, Microsoft and Facebook have some high margins, but all of them are looking over their shoulders for the next competitor. The technology firm graveyard is filled with former near monopolists. (Excite? Altavista? Compuserve?) I'm sure that there are reasons for the market failing, but I think it's more than a lack of homogenous products and vendors.