Rent Seeking

I really need to spell out how greedy our textbook publishers and their monopoly networks are. A textbook in the US can cost more than $100. Most of the times, student use that for only 1 semester/quarter. Student's textbook demand elasticity is almost perfectly inelastic. Whenever the teacher assigned a textbook, no matter how expensive it is, student will continue to buy.

The problem is those textbook publishers and textbook authors are coordinated to form the monopoly. The authors, mostly teachers as well, require their students to buy their own textbook. They at the same time, coordinate with the publishers to publish a new edition every few years ( and/or publish a "updated edition" after a few months) to kill off the used book market. The publishers, at the same time, create different edition (hardcover, paperback, US edition, Australia edition, Asia edition, etc.) for the same book. They even lobby the congress to make the arbitrage among different editions illegal (so far unsuccessful, but it is just a matter of time, as most politicans can be bought out). What a shame for all these people! they claim their role to to educate the next generation. But they screw up the public by creating this monopoly.

I recall when I was a student in an big economic class a few years ago (econ 100a intermediate microeconomics at a good public school in the Bay Area CA). The textbook was written by the instructor. In the first lecture, one student asked if it is okay to use the international edition textbook, which is basically the same content as the US edition. The teacher (the author) replied that "you are not supposed to get the book in this country". Well...He basically did not answer the question. He knows it is much cheaper, and he knows the content is the same, but he refuse to say okay.

The government put more money on education by increasing grant, low interest student loan, etc. all the additional money goes to the publishers, authors and book stores as they raise the textbook price accordingly. Many politicans are benefited as they are being bought out by those people. I really want to know if anyone does any empirical study on the relationship between textook price and governmnet education grant.