Impact of page growth on serial price increase

Abstract

The dearest explanation for a serial's increase in price is the growth in its number of pages. The authors studied a sample of 141 titles extracted from ISI between 1978 and 1992, including serials from around the world, and found that pages increased annually an average of 2,96%. For the same period, considering just the titles published in the United States, nominal prices grew around 11%, real prices around 5%, and real prices per page around 2%. The contribution of this paper to the literature is methodological as well as empirical. The regular publication of indexes of serial pages, serial real prices, and serial real prices per page would lead to a better understanding of serial price evolution.