Displacement Effects of Public Libraries

39 Pages Posted: 7 Dec 2017 Last revised: 8 Aug 2022

See all articles by Kyogo Kanazawa

Kyogo Kanazawa

Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo

Kohei Kawaguchi

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Date Written: August 7, 2022

Abstract

If free lending in public libraries is displacing sales in bookstores, some compensation may be needed to maintain incentives for authors to create new works. To determine whether this is indeed the case, we created a novel dataset that integrated bookstore sales data with public library copy data in Japan and quantified the displacement effects of public libraries. Controls for title-municipality, months-after-publication, and municipality-month-specific unobserved heterogeneity were introduced. The study found that a library copy displaced the sales of the title in the municipality by approximately 0.24 copies per month for the top 1/6 popular books and 0.52 copies for bestsellers. Various robustness checks were consistent with the baseline results; thus, the study confirmed the displacement effects of popular books.

Keywords: Public lending right, Library, Book, Displacement effects, Japan.

JEL Classification: K11, L30, L67, O34, O38

Suggested Citation

Kanazawa, Kyogo and Kawaguchi, Kohei, Displacement Effects of Public Libraries (August 7, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3082016 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3082016

Kyogo Kanazawa

Graduate School of Economics, The University of Tokyo ( email )

Yayoi 1-1-1
Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8657
Japan

Kohei Kawaguchi (Contact Author)

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology ( email )

6070 LSK Building, HKUST
Clear Water Bay
Kowloon
Hong Kong

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
1,092
Abstract Views
6,704
Rank
43,360
PlumX Metrics