Dagspressens politiska ekonomi

Abstract

Göteborg UniversitySweden Author: Göran Albinsson BruhnerSchool of Econ and Commercial Law208 pagesDepartment of Business Doctoral Thesis 1998The Political Economy of the Swedish Daily PressIn comparison with other branches, the daily press in Sweden enjoys twokinds of favour: legal and financial. The Freedom of the Press Act gives newspapers an extremely wide freedom of action in procuring input and designing the product. Unlike other commercial sectors, newspapers are to a great extent relieved of responsibility for damage caused by their products. In 1971 a very generous Press Subsidies Act was passed with the aim to presence the existing structure of the daily press. Since then, few papers have defaulted. The dissertation centers around three main questions: To what extent has the Swedish daily press obtained a preferential treatment through political decisions?How have the representatives of the daily press been able to influence the lawmakers? Which are the economic effects of the benefitsbestowed upon the daily press? The study is qualitative as well as quantitative. Special emphasis is given to rent-seeking within a public choice framework. A wide variety of methods are employed, from legal exegetic to regression analysis and game theory. One conclusion is that behavioural models based on public choice assumptions can have a predictive value. Nothing refutes the hypothesis that the positive position granted the daily press in Sweden is a result of mutualunderstanding betw&n self-interested politicians and self-interested press advocates. Another finding is that the price elasticity of the demand (measured as volume of content) for newspapers is about -0,5. The statistics do not, however, permit calculations of cross-elasticities, because newspapers engaged in duopoly competition tend to behave in full accordance with the Stackelberg theorem of the nominal price leadership.Printed in SwedenSNS, Stockholm 1998