Essays on Chinese TV Media Market and on Price Discrimination

• Main Author: Pan, Hui
• Published: University of Essex 2008
• Subjects: 381
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.495526

This thesis looks at some important issues on applied microeconomic theory and industrial economics relating to two real industries: the Chinese TV-media market and the British home-energy market. The first chapter presents the main distinctive features of the Chinese TV media market that will be used as building blocks for the formal models that follow in chapters 3 and 4. We focus on the features of the Chinese TV channels, TV viewers and advertisers. The second chapter is a selective review of research which is relevant to the study of TV media. We present the definitions, features and intuitions of previous work which we combine to generate the new insights of our subsequent chapters, as well as the areas where further research is needed. The third chapter builds a formal model to study the competition in the Chinese TV advertising market. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the competition among different types of platforms in the TV-Advertising market and the Chinese context. The fourth chapter adds two-sided market features to existing political models in media economy as well as a focus on strategic pricing and quality decisions. We look into program quality and price competition in a two-sided market framework and how media competition affects the government's decision on political advertising. The fifth chapter is an independent chapter which investigates the competition and consumer behaviour in the UK home-energy market. We analyze a realistic long term contract structure observed on this market and focus on the effect of commitment to profitability and social surplus.