A really good question

And a good one to give on an economics exam.

Why don’t the Wall Street Journal and New York Times combine paywalls? Anyone already subscribing to both newspapers would suddenly find herself paying much less. But it’s hard to imagine that in practice, the overlap is really so large: maybe 20% at most. And over the course of a year or two, there would be a much larger effect from increased demand. After all, subscribing to two leading newspapers for the price of one would be a really great deal, one that consumers would be happy to exploit. This arrangement would be likely to increase online revenue, possibly by a substantial amount.

The author, Matt Rognlie, goes on to tackle the question of how the two papers would share the revenue.