Enter the middleman: Legitimisation of literary agents in the British Victorian publishing industry 1875–1900

Abstract

The literary agent is a recent addition to the publishing industry, yet in a relatively short space of time has become instrumental in the production of literature. This article examines the origins and development of the A.P. Watt literary agency to explore how it became a dominant organisation in the late nineteenth century. It analyses how its founder Alexander Pollock Watt, despite being met with resistance, gained legitimacy to be accepted by authors and publishers. Through an analysis of historical sources this article argues that by using contract law, Watt was able to disrupt existing business practices.     

Analysis of traffic congestion costs in a competitive supply chain

We study a competitive facility location problem with identical suppliers competing in multiple markets subject to distribution network congestion. We first analyze the solution of a symmetric competitive location game and discuss the firms’ facility location and equilibrium market supply decisions. Then, we utilize the model to provide analytical characterization of the effects of traffic congestion costs on equilibrium distribution flows. These analytical results permit qualitative characterization of how changes in congestion levels and costs affect equilibrium location and distribution decisions. The results of extensive numerical studies serve to further illustrate the effects of traffic congestion costs on location, market supply quantity, and distribution decisions.     

(When) Do hub airlines internalize their self-imposed congestion delays?

Specification tests using stochastic bottleneck models of airport congestion investigate whether dominant airlines internalize or ignore self-imposed delays at twenty-seven major US airports. Data on flight times determine the airport's landing and takeoff delays for every minute of operation during peak travel days. Dynamic congestion functions based on stochastic-queuing theory separately identify delays that aircraft experience directly, impose internally on their airline's other aircraft, or impose externally on other airlines. Specification tests largely reject internalization and fail to reject non-internalization by dominant airlines. Optimal pricing should value all time using non-dominant aircraft time values and treat all delays as external.