Date of Award

5-2011

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Legacy Department

Economics

Committee Chair/Advisor

Mroz, Thomas A

Committee Member

Miller , Daniel P

Committee Member

Thomas , Charles J

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to quantify the effect that increases in home internet access had on the print newspaper subscriber retention for an anonymous newspaper during the years 1998 through 2003. Using weekly, subscriber-level transaction data from the newspaper and internet usage statistics from the Current Population Survey Internet and Computer Use Supplements, a discrete-time duration model is used to estimate the effect that home internet access had on the probability of a current subscriber canceling her subscription. I find that on average, increasing the probability of internet access from the 10th to the 90th percentile value increases the probability of a customer canceling her subscription in a given month by 50.5%. The same increase in internet probability also reduces the probability of continuing a subscription for longer than 167 months from 0.736 to 0.597 on average.

Included in

Economics Commons

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