Intermedia Substitutability and Market Demand by National Advertisers

Alvin J. Silk, Lisa R. Klein, Ernst R. Berndt

NBER Working Paper No. 8624
Issued in December 2001
NBER Program(s):   IO

We assess substitutable and complementary relationships among eight national advertising media classes, as well as the magnitude of their own-price elasticities. We use a translog demand model, whose parameters we estimate by three-stage least squares, based on 1960-94 annual U.S. data.We find aggregate demand by national advertisers for each of the eight media is own-price inelastic, and that cross-price elasticities suggest slightly more substitute than complementary relationships, although both are rather weak. These patterns are consistent with long prevailing institutional arrangements and media selection practices.

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Published: Silk, Alvin J., Lisa R. Klein and Ernst R. Berndt. "Intermedia Substitutability And Market Demand By National Advertisers," Review of Industrial Organization, 2002, v20(4,Jun), 323-348.

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