Download or read book Essays on the Economics of the Motion Picture Industry written by Liang Xu and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My dissertation consists of three chapters that address important questions in the U.S. motion picture industry. In Chapter 1, I limit the attention to the theatrical market and use a linear model with fixed effects to examine the impact of online word of mouth (WOM) on box office revenue. The online word-of-mouth dataset is extracted from Internet Movie Database (IMDB), one of the most popular and informative movie websites in the U.S. Chapter 1 contributes to the literature by using basic natural language processing (NLP) techniques to construct text features including review polarity, subjectivity, readability, and similarity to the product description in a manner which has barely been discussed before. The evidence shows that 1) volume and valence of word-of-mouth communication in the last period are positively associated with the current movie sales; 2) reviews with extreme rating scores, no matter whether they are positive or negative, can attract attention and increase the movie demand; 3) the audience does read the reviews instead of relying only on summary statistics and subjective reviews with rich content, even at the cost of low readability, can potentially boost box office revenue; 4) the disadvantage of the insufficient marketing budgets for limited releases can be rectified through the impact of proper online word-of-mouth communication. Chapter 2 expands the scope to include both theatrical and home video markets in the study. The home video market generates more gross revenue than the theatrical market but has received surprisingly less attention from economic scholars. Using market-level data, I first conduct demand estimation separately for the two markets using logit and one-level nested logit models. This step allows me to quantify movie qualities, consumers' utility decay rates, seasonality in demand, and market expansion effect in order to understand how these two markets operate differently. Next, I pool all the sample movies from the two markets together and employ a two-level nested logit model to quantify consumers' substitution patterns between the two different viewership platforms. The results validate that the two-level nest structure is consistent with the maximization of a random utility function (McFadden 1978) and consumers do distinguish between watching movies in theaters and on home video. Chapter 3 builds upon the demand estimation results from Chapter 2 and studies the optimal time to release a movie under the sequential distribution setup. Movie distributors use what is known as the windowing strategy --- releasing a film in different venues over discrete periods of exclusivity to maximize consumption over the lifetime of a property. The trend toward shorter time lags in theatrical releases has caused controversy in the U.S. motion picture industry, necessitating the demystification of how distributors optimize release schedules for sequential distribution. I model distributors' windowing strategy as a one-shot sequential-move game with incomplete information. I follow the method of pseudo-backward induction proposed by Einav (2009) and further estimate the weekly cost of distribution and distributors' weighting coefficient on the two windows while taking the demand estimates as given. Eventually, by conducting counterfactual analyses in a two-player game, I find that higher cost of theatrical distribution, lower weights on the theatrical window, poorer movie quality with weak opening performance, or faster theatrical utility decay can all potentially rationalize the practice of shrinking theatrical window length.
Download or read book Essays on the Economics of the Motion Picture Industry written by Naibin Chen and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter 1 inspects how critic reviews and audience reviews impact a movie's box office performance differently. I use a Bayesian Learning model to model the process of consumers forming their beliefs about a movie's quality, based on their prior, critic reviews, and audience reviews. Consumers then make a discrete choice from the set of movies that are available in a given week. Using a dataset of 665 movies released in 2011-2015, I estimate the model and show that critic reviews and audience reviews have significant and heterogeneous effects on movies produced by major studios or minor studios, movies reviewed by critics before release (regular) or not (cold-opened), and movies with different advertising expenditures. My counterfactual analyses show that forcing movies to be screened before release harms 71% of the cold-opened movies; consumers benefit from the availability of audience reviews by watching more good movies and fewer bad movies, with the quality measured from the perspective of consumers. Chapter 2 continues to discuss how the availability of reviews may change the way that consumers respond to advertising and, in turn, affect firms' advertising strategies. Using data from the motion picture industry, I estimate the effect of advertising on consumer choices depending on whether or not consumers have access to expert reviews. Given the demand estimates, I evaluate a studio's optimal advertising choice depending on the availability of expert reviews. My results show that advertising and expert reviews both have significant impacts on demand. For an average movie, when expert reviews are absent, advertising is about 2.25 times as effective at increasing the opening week revenue as it is when expert reviews are available. It would appear that expert reviews help consumers make better choices, as the percentage of consumers who choose a movie they would not watch if they were better informed drops by 0.74% on average. Additionally, with the presence of expert reviews, the median studio saves 76.60% of advertising expenditure and studios' profits increase by $2.80 million per movie on average. Chapter 3 investigates the cultural effect of changing a product characteristic in the motion picture industry. In response to a growing Chinese market, Hollywood companies have been adding Chinese features in their movies. Such a change may improve a movie's performance in the Chinese market, but may hurt the box office revenues in other markets. Using a dataset of 501 movies released in 2011-2014, I estimate the effect of adding Chinese features on the box office revenues in the domestic market, the Chinese market, and the rest of the world. I find that adding Chinese features significantly improves the revenue in China, but has a negative and insignificant effect in the domestic and the international markets. If Chinese features were added to all 168 movies imported to China, on average, movies would suffer a net loss of $4.58 million. But as the Chinese market size grows, there could be a net gain of $12.10 million if the market size doubles, with 63% of movies benefiting from adding Chinese features.
Download or read book Economic Essays on the Theatrical Motion Picture Industry written by David H. Waterman and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Concise Handbook of Movie Industry Economics written by Charles C. Moul and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-14 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This short handbook collects essays on all aspects of the motion picture industry by leading authorities in political economy, economics, accounting, finance, and marketing. In addition to offering the reader a perspective on what is known and what has been accomplished, it includes both new findings on a variety of topics and directions for additional research. Topics include estimation of theatrical and ancillary demand, profitability studies, the resolution of evident paradoxes in studio executive behavior, the interaction of the industry and government, the impacts of the most recent changes in accounting standards, and the role and importance of participation contracts. New results include findings on the true nature of the seasonality of theatrical demand, the predictive power of surveys based upon trailers, the impact of the Academy Awards, the effectiveness of prior history measures to gauge cast members and directors, and the substitutability of movies across different genres.
Download or read book Economic Essays on the Theatrical Motion Picture Industry written by David Harney Waterman and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Concise Handbook of Movie Industry Economics written by Charles C. Moul and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-14 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This short handbook collects essays on all aspects of the motion picture industry by leading authorities in political economy, economics, accounting, finance, and marketing. In addition to bringing the reader an up-to-date perspective on what is known and what has been accomplished, it includes both new findings on a variety of topics and directions for additional research. Topics include estimation of theatrical and ancillary demand, profitability studies, the resolution of evident paradoxes in studio executive behavior, the interaction of the industry and government, the impacts of the most recent changes in accounting standards, and the role and importance of participation contracts. New results include findings on the true nature of the seasonality of theatrical demand, the predictive power of surveys based upon trailers, the impact of the Academy Awards, the efectiveness of prior history measures to gauge cast members and directors, and the substitutability of movies across different genres.
Download or read book The American Film Industry written by Tino Balio and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1985-03-04 with total page 677 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Upon its original publication in 1976, The American Film Industry was welcomed by film students, scholars, and fans as the first systematic and unified history of the American movie industry. Now this indispensible anthology has been expanded and revised to include a fresh introductory overview by editor Tino Balio and ten new chapters that explore such topics as the growth of exhibition as big business, the mode of production for feature films, the star as market strategy, and the changing economics and structure of contemporary entertainment companies. The result is a unique collection of essays, more comprehensive and current than ever, that reveals how the American movie industry really worked in a century of constant change-from kinetoscopes and the coming of sound to the star system, 1950s blacklisting, and today's corporate empires.
Download or read book The American Movie Industry written by Gorham Anders Kindem and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These seventeen essays make up a history of the American film industry. Because film-making entails a special blend of economic and artistic endeavor, Kindem has chosen contributions from experts in a variety of fields—business, law, mass communications, and cinema studies. The organization of this anthology is both chronological and topical. The first three parts of the book basically follow the history of the film industry’s marketing strategies, structural changes, and product innovations: from exhibition in Kinetoscope arcades to film “acts” in vaudeville, Nickelodeons, and movie palaces; from states’ rights marketing schemes to block booking and chain-store exhibition strategies; from a production and distribution monopoly based on the pooling of major patents to an oligopoly of production, distribution, and exhibition firms; and from the rise of feature films, the star system, and the studio system to Hollywood’s conversions to sound and color. The fourth through sixth parts examine film regulation and censorship, film’s interaction with television, and America’s role in the international film industry. The diversity of methods and perspectives in this anthology are representative of the field, suggesting that the history of the American film industry is really a collection of histories, not a monolithic, single-strand chronology of events.
Download or read book On Hollywood written by Allen J. Scott and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is the U.S. motion picture industry concentrated in Hollywood and why does it remain there in the age of globalization? Allen Scott uses the tools of economic geography to explore these questions and to provide a number of highly original answers. The conceptual roots of his analysis go back to Alfred Marshall's theory of industrial districts and pick up on modern ideas about business clusters as sites of efficient and innovative production. On Hollywood builds on this work by adding major new empirical elements. By examining the history of motion-picture production from the early twentieth century to the present through this analytic lens, Scott is able to show why the industry (which was initially focused on New York) had shifted the majority of its production to Southern California by 1919. He also addresses in detail the bases of Hollywood's long-standing creative energies and competitive advantages. At the same time, the book explores the steady globalization of Hollywood's market reach as well as the cultural and political dilemmas posed by this phenomenon. On Hollywood will appeal not only to general readers with an interest in the motion-picture industry, but also to economic geographers, business professionals, regional development practitioners, and cultural theorists as well.
Download or read book Hollywood Economics written by Arthur De Vany and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Movies expected to perform well can flop, whilst independent movies with low budgets can be wildly successful. In this text, De Vany casts his eye over all aspects of the business to present some intriguing conclusions.
Download or read book Economic Control of the Motion Picture Industry written by Mae D. Huettig and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2017-01-30 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study was undertaken in conjunction with the Motion Picture Research Project. The research was conducted in Hollywood over a period of two years from April 1939 to April 1941.
Download or read book How Hollywood Works written by Janet Wasko and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2003-11-25 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about the US motion picture industry - its structure and policies, its operations and practices. It looks at the processes that are involved in turning raw materials and labor into feature films. It describes the process of film production, distribution, exhibition and retail - a process that involves different markets where materials, labor and products are bought and sold. In other words, this is a book about how Hollywood works - as an industry. How Hollywood Works: - offers an up-to-date survey of the policies and structure of the US film industry - looks at the relationship between the film industry and other media industries - examines the role of the major studios and the other ′players′ - including, law firms, talent agents, and trade unions and guilds - provides access to hard-to-find statistical information on the industry While many books describe the film production and marketing process, they usually do so from an industry perspective and few look at Hollywood critically from within a more general economic, political and social context. By offering just such a critique, Janet Wasko′s text provides a timely and essential analysis of how Hollywood works for all students of film and media.
Download or read book Three Empirical Essays on Industries with Creative Content written by David Adam Molin and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the motion picture industry most actors and actresses work for low fees, but a small group can command compensations of millions of dollars per movie. In the first chapter I test the consumer learning hypothesis: consumers choose films using information from other films with the same star actor or actress. Using DVD sales data for a sample of 206 films, I show that the release of a new movie increases sales of old movies with the same star. However, this result is driven by a subset of sequels and Oscar nominated films. I conclude that some effect other than consumer learning must drive the presence of superstars in the motion picture industry. In chapter two I provide a novel explanation for the optimality of the sequential release by showing that sequential release can be the equilibrium of a signaling game. Theater owners must choose which films to screen and studios signal which films are of high quality by delaying the home video release of those films until after the theatrical run. Sequential release is an effective form of signaling because it is costly. The properties of the equilibrium of the DVD release timing game I describe suggest that a theatrical premiere with release in other markets no sooner than three months later will remain the norm for big budget movies. One important economic consequence of the Internet and information technology has been the reduction in the fixed costs of distribution and a consequent increase in product variety. In chapter three I investigate the effect on the welfare of producers of creative content. I identify a set of books sold on Amazon.com for which the author's revenue can be easily computed. I use this data to parameterize a model of author entry and then estimate the welfare gains of authors and consumers from Print-on-Demand (POD) technology.
Download or read book Essays on the U S Motion Picture Industry written by Lona Fowdur and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of a collection of essays about the U.S motion picture industry. Psychology literature proposes that emotional product attributes are central to the quality of movie consumption experiences. However such processes have been overlooked in the estimation of movie demand and quality reviewing. Chapter 1 calibrates emotional content of a movie via a bag-of-words approach which maps a movie's plot keywords onto a set of basic human emotions. An emotional content vector is combined with other movie characteristics to build a random utility demand model for movies. The findings indicate that consumers prefer emotional variety and moderate levels of emotional complexity rather than incoherent differences. Also, the value of emotional attributes in movies is influenced by macroeconomic variables, potentially via their impact on consumer moods. As a confirmatory and supplementary analysis Chapter 1 also analyses preferences of a group of individual consumers, who rate movies online. This estimation replicates several findings from the aggregate demand model and generates further insights into consumer tastes which vary by demographic characteristics. Chapter 2 builds on the literature which identifies the roles of movie critics as influencers of consumer choice and predictors of movie revenue by proposing a third role for movie critics: that of evaluators who signal movie quality independently of profit potential or commercial success. The relevance of this role is assessed by establishing whether critics' incentive structures favor reviews for artistic movies which are systematically different from those of commercial movies. To this end, critics' ratings are compared with audience ratings: The positive correlation between average critics' reviews and audience reviews decreases for highly-artistic movies, which is consistent with the evaluator role permeating critical reviewing for such movies. Chapter 3 investigates why the simple mean of critics' ratings for movies with an African American in the lead role is lower than movies with a white actor in the lead. Sources of this discrepancy can include differences in movie production and marketing expenditures, type of movie (i.e. genre, MPAA rating, emotional content, artistic and popular appeal), how good the actors are, audience tastes and timecontingent preferences of critics and audiences. Despite inclusion of these controls, results in Chapter 3 suggest that critics' ratings for movies with African American leads are up to 6 points lower and that critics favor movies where African Americans are featured in supporting roles rather than lead roles.
Download or read book An Economic History of Film written by John Sedgwick and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-09-09 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The movie industry boomed in the twentieth century, and is still going strong today. However, the economics of movies has been curiously under explored until now. Innovative and informative, this accessible book, which includes contributions from some of the leading experts in the area, is a huge step forward in our understanding of this important topic.
Download or read book The International Movie Industry written by Gorham Anders Kindem and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive history of the international movie industry during the 20th century. Essays examine the film industries of 19 countries focusing on individual national movie industries' economic, social, aesthetic, technological and political/ideological development within an international context.
Download or read book Under the Stars written by Lois S. Gray and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Technological change has created a dazzling array of new products and media for the enjoyment of entertainment and transformed the economic structure of production and distribution. Simultaneously, it has produced difficult new challenges for workers and managers in the entertainment industry. The contributors to this volume suggest that an understanding of the art and entertainment industry's experience may offer useful insights into the problems in other rapidly changing industries.
