Flood Stage Economics: The subtle and often unspoken dangers in the displacement debate

Recent work by Dr. Aguiar and Dr. Waldfogel has made its way from a working paper to a technical report released by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, one of the Joint Research Centres within the European Commission. The work, “Streaming Reaches Flood Stage: Does Spotify Stimulate or Depress Music Sales?,” (link to PDF) attempts to determine whether any displacement (i.e., cannibalization) of sales occurs as a result of increased adoption of streaming services, services which in this case…