Cultural economics, books and reading

The field of cultural economics is surprisingly short on research on the book market and on the activity of reading compared with other more recently invented media such as films and musical recordings. There are a number of traditional economic propositions relevant to books and reading which could be further researched. In addition, books and reading are strongly impacted by the disruptive innovations of digital technology and the use of online distribution platforms that fuel much of the research on the more recently invented cultural media. This paper gives an overview of some key new papers collected in this special issue and identifies additional lacunae in this general field of research.