Should cable television channels be offered à la carte?

Why do cable TV companies force people to purchase channels they don’t even like? Wouldn’t consumers be better off if they could purchase channels individually rather than only as part of large packages? Not necessarily. This research shows that channel prices would be higher on average if they were offered individually, and if the increase in prices is large enough it can more than offset the benefits of unbundling

Friction Stir Processing of SSM356 Aluminium Alloy

AbstractThe aim of this experiment was to improve the mechanical properties of SSM 356 aluminum alloys by friction stir processing, a solid-state technique for microstructural modification using the heat from a friction and stirring. The parameters of friction stir processing for SSM 356 aluminum alloys were studied at three different travelling speeds: 80, 120 and 160mm/min under three different rotation speeds 1320, 1480 and 1750rpm. The hardness and tensile strength properties were increased by friction stir processing. The hardness of friction stir processing was 64.55 HV which was higher than the base metal (40.58 HV). The tensile strengths of friction stir processing were increased about 11.8% compared to the base metal. The optimal processing parameter was rotation speed at 1750rpm with the travelling speed at 160mm/min. Consequently, the application of the friction stir processing is a very effective method for the mechanical improvement of semi-solid metal aluminum alloys

Should cable television channels be offered à la carte?

Why do cable TV companies force people to purchase channels they don’t even like? Wouldn’t consumers be better off if they could purchase channels individually rather than only as part of large packages? Not necessarily. This research shows that channel prices would be higher on average if they were offered individually, and if the increase in prices is large enough it can more than offset the benefits of unbundling

The Welfare Effects of Bundling in Multichannel Television Markets

We measure how the bundling of television channels affects welfare. We estimate an industry model of viewership, demand, pricing, bundling, and input market bargaining using data on ratings, purchases, prices, bundles, and input costs. We conduct simulations of à la carte policies that require distributors to offer individual channels for sale to consumers. We estimate that negotiated input costs rise by 103.0 percent under à la carte. These higher input costs offset consumer benefits from purchasing individual channels. Mean consumer and total surplus change by an estimated -5.4 to 0.2 percent and -1.7 to 6.0 percent, respectively.a la carte; bargaining; bundling; cable; counterfactual; econometrics; multichannel; nash product; pay; policy; price discrimination; regulation; satellite; structural estimation; television

Concentration in Product Markets

This paper uses new data to reexamine trends in concentration in U.S. markets from 1994 to 2019. The paper's main contribution is to construct concentration measures that reflect narrowly defined consumption-based product markets, as would be defined in an antitrust setting, while accounting for cross-brand ownership, and to do so over a broad range of consumer goods and services. Our findings differ substantially from well established results using production data. We find that 42.2% of the industries in our sample are "highly concentrated" as defined by the U.S. Horizontal Merger Guidelines, which is much higher than previous results. Also in contrast with the previous literature, we find that product market concentration has been decreasing since 1994. This finding holds at the national level and also when product markets are defined locally in 29 state groups. We find increasing concentration once markets are aggregated to a broader sector level. We argue that these two diverging trends are best explained by a simple theoretical model based on Melitz and Ottaviano (2008), in which the costs of a firm supplying adjacent geographic or product markets falls over time, and efficient firms enter each others' home product markets