a b s t r a c tWe analyze a mixed oligopoly with free entry by private firms, assuming that a public firm maximizes an increasing function of output, subject to a break-even constraint. We establish an irrelevance result: whenever a mixed oligopoly is viable, then aggregate output, aggregate costs and welfare are the same with and without the public firm. However, replacing a viable mixed oligopoly with a public monopoly yields higher net welfare. Implications for privatization policy are suggested.
The paper explores the relationship between economics and scientific journal publishing in a number of areas by: establishing the fact, neglected by some librarians, that the``serials crisis'' is not exclusively a plague infecting the STM sector, but that economics too has been badly affected; providing a more disaggregated analysis of the market power exerted by the dominant commercial publisher in economics journal publishing; considering briefly three academic-led experiments aimed at improving scholarly communication in economics; comparing the policy stance taken by the UK Competition Commission on scientific publishing and on banking for small businesses in two recent reports and exposing its glaring inconsistency; and suggesting a modest proposal to remedy some of the inefficiencies identified in this paper.
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