TY  - JOUR
AU  - Morton,Fiona Scott
AU  - Oster,Sharon
TI  - Behavioral Decision-Making: An Application to the Setting of Magazine Subscription Prices
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 10120
PY  - 2003
Y2  - November 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10120
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w10120.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Fiona Scott Morton
Yale School of Management
Box 208200
New Haven, CT 06520-8200
Tel: 203/432-5569
Fax: 203/432-6974
E-Mail: fiona.scottmorton@yale.edu

Sharon Oster
School of Management
Yale University
135 Prospect St.
New Haven, CT 06520
E-Mail: sharon.oster@yale.edu
AB  - Using data from American magazines, we explore the relationship between subscription discounts and magazine characteristics. We focus in particular on those magazine features that might lead time-inconsistent consumers to wish to engage in commitment behavior. We find that for magazines whose payoff is in the future and/or that are meritorious for other reasons, subscription discounts are lower all else equal. This finding suggests that publishers may be able to set subscription prices in order to extract rents from consumers' willingness to tie their own hands in terms of their future reading.
ER  -