Libraries deliver the majority of US book consumption, and library costs are kept low by the first sale doctrine's guarantee that libraries can lend print books without additional compensation to publishers. However, publishers' decisions to restrict ebook access may threaten libraries. We measure impacts of holdings on circulation; and library holdings choices suggest that library managers value instances of ebook circulation more than print. We use a structural model of patron demand and library holdings to show that more restrictive print book terms would have ten times the negative patron welfare impact of an equivalent restriction on ebooks.

Why do people frequently cooperate in defiance of their immediate incentives? One explanation is that individuals are conditionally cooperative. As an explanation of behavior in one-shot settings, such preferences require individuals to be able to discern their opponents' preferences. Using data from a television game show, we provide evidence about how individuals implement conditionally cooperative preferences. We show that contestants forgo large sums of money to be cooperative; they cooperate at heightened levels when their opponents are predictably cooperative; and they fare worse when their observable characteristics predict less cooperation because opponents avoid cooperating with them.

Scholars working on the border of economics and psychology have documented many contexts in which individual decision-making is unreliable and might be improved by paternalistic interventions. Against this mounting body of negative evidence, economists' default belief in consumer sovereignty has been motivated primarily by theory rather than evidence. The goal of the present study is to see whether there is direct evidence supporting economists' faith in consumer sovereignty in a simple context. We address this question by presenting direct evidence that consumers' own purchases generate between 10% and 18% more value, per dollar spent, than items received as gifts.