In conventional wisdom, the reform of British copyright law during the eighteenth century brought an end to the monopoly on the sale of books held by the Stationers’ Company, and the resulting competition was one of the driving forces behind the expansion of British book production during the Enlightenment. In this paper, we analyze a new dataset on eighteenth century book prices and author payments, showing that the legal reform brought about only a temporary increase in competition. The data suggest that by the end of the century, informal collusion between publishers had replaced the legal monopoly powers in place at the beginning of the century. The monopoly power of retailers is not so easily undermined.

中文翻译：

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十八世纪英国图书交易中的垄断力量

按照传统观点，十八世纪英国版权法的改革结束了文具公司所持书籍销售的垄断，由此产生的竞争是在此期间英国书籍生产扩张的推动力之一。启示。在本文中，我们分析了有关18世纪书籍价格和作者付款的新数据集，表明法律改革仅带来了竞争的暂时增加。数据表明，到本世纪末，出版商之间的非正式合谋已经取代了本世纪初确立的合法垄断权。零售商的垄断能力并不容易被削弱。