Piracy and box office movie revenues: Evidence from Megaupload

In this paper we evaluate the heterogeneous effects of online copyright enforcement. We ask whether the unexpected shutdown of the popular file hosting platform Megaupload had a differential effect on box office revenues of wide-release vs. niche movies. Identification comes from a comparison of movies that were available on Megaupload to those that were not. We show that only movies that premiere in a relatively large number of theaters benefitted from the shutdown of Megaupload. The average effect, however, is negative. We provide suggestive evidence that this result is driven by information externalities. The idea is that online piracy acts as a mechanism to spread information about product characteristics across consumers with different valuations for the product. Our results question the effectiveness of blanket public anti-piracy policy, not only from a consumer perspective, but also from a producer perspective.     

社会学习与消费升级——来自中国电影市场的经验证据

文化服务产业消费“扩容”与“提质”对于中国当前消费升级至关重要。以2012—2016年中国1854部电影为研究对象,本文将每日电影院层面票房数据汇总至全国层面,构建“电影—日”全国票房数据。为避免弱工具变量问题,采用新近发展的套索(LASSO)回归选择最优的天气与空气污染变量作为电影首映周非预期票房的工具变量,识别了社会学习对电影跨期消费增长的影响。研究发现:受外生冲击影响的电影首映周非预期票房变化对于后续周票房存在显著的正向跨期溢出效应,且该溢出效应随着时间推移而逐渐减小。进一步地,制作质量越高、事前质量信息不确定性越高以及市场偏好越集中,电影消费的跨期溢出效应就越明显。这一结果表明,社会学习是引致电影消费跨期溢出效应的主要机制,观察学习与社会网络外部性等机制并未得到实证证据的支持。总体而言,本文揭示了社会学习是影响电影消费“扩容”与“提质”的关键因素,从个体间微观互动机制这一全新视角为激发中国新一轮消费升级提供了可行的实践路径。     

Determinants of UK Box Office Success: The Impact of Quality Signals

This paper analyses the roles of various quality signals in the demand for cinema attendance in the United Kingdom. Estimation of a three-stage least squares model with data for 527 films released in the United Kingdom shows that the impacts of advertising and critical reviews on box office revenues vary both in channels and magnitudes of impact. Our model treats total advertising as endogenous, alongside the number of opening screens and total box office revenues, while critical reviews are considered exogenous. Our results show that total advertising affects total box office revenue while responding endogenously to critical reviews.     

THE INFLUENCE OF EXPERT REVIEWS ON CONSUMER DEMAND FOR EXPERIENCE GOODS: A CASE STUDY OF MOVIE CRITICS*

An inherent problem in measuring the influence of expert reviews on the demand for experience goods is that a correlation between good reviews and high demand may be spurious, induced by an underlying correlation with unobservable quality signals. Using the timing of the reviews by two popular movie critics, Siskel and Ebert, relative to opening weekend box office revenue, we apply a difference‐in‐differences approach to circumvent the problem of spurious correlation. After purging the spurious correlation, the measured influence effect is smaller though still detectable. Positive reviews have a particularly large influence on the demand for dramas and narrowly‐released movies.     

Cinematic Explosion: New Products,Unpredictabilty and Realized Quality in the Digital Era

While file sharing has undermined firms’ ability to generate revenue for their products, other technological change has reduced entry barriers in cultural industries, with substantial positive impacts on the availability of new books and recorded music. Unpredictability of product quality is a generic feature of cultural goods, including music, books and movies, so an infusion of new products holds the possibility of bringing not just low‐appeal products but also new products that consumers find highly appealing. This paper explores the effects of reduced costs of production, promotion and distribution in the motion picture industry, asking four questions. First, we document substantial growth in the number of movies brought to market, particularly since the early 2000's. Second, we document growth in institutions by which consumers can discover new movies, many of which are produced outside of the major studios and not released in theaters. Third, we show that the new independent movies account for a growing share of commercially successful movies. Finally, we present evidence, based on both critical assessments and usage, that recent vintages are more appealing to consumers than earlier offerings. These findings on movies echo developments documented elsewhere for recorded music and books.     

Effects of Skill and Attitudes on Employee Performance and Earnings

This study uses original survey and archival data from factory and office employees in one firm to relate differences among individual employees' performance to differences in their skill and attitudes about work, and to test the association between employees' earnings and their performance, skill, and attitudes. We suggest that the way in which skill and attitudes affect performance will depend on the type of work that is done. The main results show that among factory employees, those who have on-the-job training and longer experience receive better performance ratings than those without training and with less experience. Factory employees' earnings depend on their performance, following the human capital model of wage determination. Among office workers, training and experience do not significantly affect performance ratings; instead, higher-rated employees have more positive attitudes about work. Office employees' earnings depend on their classroom training, experience, and attitudes, but not on their rated performance.     

Board reform versus profits: The impact of ratings on the adoption of governance practices

Research summary: External stakeholders frequently attempt to influence organizations' adoption of new practices through the creation of public ratings. Based on the insights of performance feedback theory, we develop the theory of organizational reactions to external ratings to explain how firms' behaviors depend on their rating scores and their profitability. A central issue in our theory is the conflict between established internal goals and goals introduced by public ratings, with public ratings receiving lower priority than established profitability goals. Our theory suggests that, contrary to the expectations of the external stakeholders, firms targeted for criticism by ratings become less likely to adopt corresponding practices when their profitability is below aspirations. These arguments are supported in data on the diffusion of corporate governance practices in Canada. Managerial summary: Firms and their products are rated and ranked by external agencies ranging from Consumer Reports to magazine rankings of admired, environmental, or well‐governed companies. We investigate whether such ratings affect firm behaviors, and especially whether they can incentivize poorly rated firms to improve their ranking when these firms' profitability is also low. Using the leading corporate governance ranking in Canada, we find that rankings could have adverse effects: when firms have both poor governance ranking and poor profitability they are less likely to adopt governance practices, contrary to the ranking creators' intentions. The findings show that there is a hierarchy of firms' goals, where the goal of profitability comes ahead of other goals imposed by external agencies through ratings and rankings. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Box‐Office Demand: The Importance of Being #1

We propose a theoretical framework to understand the effect on a movie's eventual theatrical success of leading the box office during the opening weekend. We consider two possible channels: a positive shock to the utility from watching the movie and a greater awareness of the movie's existence. We derive a series of testable predictions, which we test on U.S. box office data. The results suggest that being #1 in sales during the opening weekend has an economically and statistically significant effect on the movie's total demand; and that the primary channel for this effect is through the greater awareness induced by being #1.     

Do ratings of firms converge? Implications for managers,investors and strategy researchers

Research summary : Raters of firms play an important role in assessing domains ranging from sustainability to corporate governance to best places to work. Managers, investors, and scholars increasingly rely on these ratings to make strategic decisions, invest trillions of dollars in capital, and study corporate social responsibility (CSR), guided by the implicit assumption that the ratings are valid. We document the surprising lack of agreement across social ratings from six well‐established raters. These differences remain even when we adjust for explicit differences in the definition of CSR held by different raters, implying the ratings have low validity. Our results suggest that users of social ratings should exercise caution in interpreting their connection to actual CSR and that raters should conduct regular evaluations of their ratings. Managerial summary : Ratings of corporate social responsibility (CSR) guide trillions of dollars of investment, but managers, investors, and researchers know little about whether these ratings accurately measure CSR. In practice, there are examples of highly rated firms becoming embroiled in scandals and the same firm receiving sharply different ratings from different rating agencies. We evaluate six of the leading raters and find little overlap in their assessments of CSR. This lack of consensus suggests that social responsibility is challenging to measure reliably and that users of these ratings should be cautious in drawing conclusions about firms based on this data. We encourage the rating agencies to regularly validate their data in an effort to improve the measurement of CSR. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Prosecution and Leniency Programs: The Role of Bluffing in Opening Investigations

This paper characterizes the optimal investigation and leniency policies when the Competition Authority is privately informed about the strength of a cartel case. I show that the Competition Authority can then exploit firms’ uncertainty about the risk of conviction to obtain confessions even when the case is weak. More generally, I show that offering full leniency allows the Competition Authority to open more successful investigations (what I refer to as the ‘activism effect’ of leniency), which overall raises both cartel desistance and cartel deterrence. Finally, I discuss the policy implications of the model.     

The U.S. Motion Pictures Industry: An Empirical Approach

We hypothesize that the U.S. motion pictures industry is structured so that star presence increases box office receipts and (less so) admissions, but places Ricardian limits on the output of blockbusters. The few dominant studios (majors) rely on a modified star system to generate supra-normal box office by stimulating admissions at exhibitors. Rising costs (from stars and their promotion) are required for rising revenues; that is, the majors gain revenue only at higher costs. Although the industry has unique features, the empirical results are surprisingly relevant to other industries.     

Corporate Leniency Programs when Firms have Private Information: The Push of Prosecution and the Pull of Pre‐emption

A corporate leniency program provides relief from government penalties to the first member of a cartel to cooperate with the authorities. This study explores the incentives to apply for leniency when each cartel member has private information as to the likelihood that the competition authority will be able to convict them without a cooperating firm. A firm may apply for leniency because it fears being convicted (‘prosecution effect’) or because it fears another firm will apply (‘pre‐emption effect’). Policies by the competition authority to magnify concerns about pre‐emption—and thereby induce greater use of the leniency program—are also explored.     

The impact of the 2002 reform of the EU leniency program on cartel outcomes

The objective of this study is to empirically assess whether the 2002 reform of the EU leniency program, which brought the EU leniency policy much closer to the US policy, has increased the European Commission’s capability to destabilize cartels while making prosecution more efficient. More specifically, relying on a difference-in-difference approach, we estimate the impact of the 2002 reform on cartel duration, fines before and after applying leniency reductions and duration of investigation. We find that the 2002 reform decreased cartel duration by about 87 percent, but did not significantly affect the other outcome variables. Thus, our findings seem to suggest that the 2002 reform has improved the cartel-destabilizing effect of the EU leniency program, without enhancing however its effectiveness in prosecuting cartels.     

The determinants of office cap rates: The international evidence

We examine commercial office cap rates in 89 large cities in 33 developed and developing countries in the 2000–2019 period. We find that cap rates decline throughout the world over this period, reflecting a corresponding decline in the real rate of interest. In the cross-city analysis our most robust findings are that office cap rates are lower in wealthier cities, especially those that are either considered gateway cities or financial centers. In addition, cap rates tend to be higher in countries with lower credit ratings and higher inflation rates. We find that cap rates in suburban office markets are higher than in central business districts, and for a given metropolis, suburban cap rates are lower in suburbs with better public transport connections to the central business district. Finally, evidence from regressions with city fixed effects reveal that cap rates rise as the discount rate and vacancy rates increase and fall as cities get wealthier.     

The effectiveness of leniency programs when firms choose the degree of collusion

An antitrust authority grants leniency pre- and post-investigation. It chooses the probability of an investigation. Firms pick the degree of collusion: The more they collude, the higher are profits, but so is the probability of detection. Firms thus trade-off higher profits against higher expected fines. If firms are sufficiently patient, leniency is ineffective; it may even increase collusion. Increasing the probability of an investigation at low levels does not increase deterrence. Increasing the probability of an investigation at high levels reduces collusion, yet never completely. With bare pre-investigation leniency, deterrence is better than without leniency. If firms are sufficiently impatient, granting leniency pre- and post- is better than merely pre-investigation.     

OPTIMAL CORPORATE LENIENCY PROGRAMS*

This study characterizes the corporate leniency policy that minimizes the frequency with which collusion occurs. Though it can be optimal to provide only partial leniency, plausible sufficient conditions are provided whereby the antitrust authority should waive all penalties for the first firm to come forward. It is also shown that restrictions should be placed on when amnesty is awarded, though it can be optimal to award amnesty even when the antitrust authority is very likely to win the case without insider testimony.     

The Role and Determinants of Concession Sales in Movie Theaters: Evidence from the Spanish Exhibition Industry

The importance of concession sales in the movie exhibition industry is widely acknowledged among economists and other social scientists that have studied this industry in the past. Despite this recognition, the lack of appropriate data has constrained existing studies that document the role that concessions play in movie theaters. Using detailed weekly movie theater data on concession sales, box office revenues and transaction characteristics from a major exhibitor in Spain, we shed light on the relation between concession sales and the following factors (i) theater attendance, (ii) non-traditional channels of ticket distribution, (iii) audience composition, and (iv) theater and market specific factors.      

Follow the money: Online piracy and self-regulation in the advertising industry

We study the effects of a self-regulation effort, orchestrated by the European Commission in 2016 and finalized in 2018, that aims to reduce advertising revenues for publishers of copyright infringing content. Data on the third-party HTTP requests made by a large number of piracy websites lets us observe the relations of the piracy and advertising industry over time. We compare these dynamics to a control group of non-advertising services which are not subject to the self-regulation. Our results suggest that the effort is limited in its effectiveness. On average, the number of piracy websites that make requests to EU-based advertising services does not change significantly. Only when we allow for heterogeneity in the popularity of third-party services, we find that the number of piracy websites that interact with the most popular EU-based advertising services decreases by 42%. We do not find evidence that non-EU-based advertising services react to the self-regulation. This implies that only a small share of the firms in the market comply with self-regulation in a way that is visible in our data. We also do not find evidence that the demand for piracy websites decreases due to this “follow the money” initiative.     

Using Revenue Sharing to Implement Flexible Prices: Evidence from Movie Exhibition Contracts

Movie exhibition contracts entail revenue‐sharing terms that go down with weeks since release. We develop a simple model to show how the form of these contracts can be explained by the distributors’ desire to set flexible prices. We then use detailed data on theater‐movie contracts in Spain, where we exploit the information available at the time of contracting for movies previously released in the U.S., and other movie and theater characteristics, to show how the implications of our flexible pricing argument are supported in the data, and differentiate our explanation from prior, more standard risk‐sharing and moral‐hazard explanations.     

微电影 一个产业生态变革的开始

贾樟柯搬了张凳子坐在导演位置,仔细看着眼前小屏幕里的每一个细节,神情却和往常略有不同——在这组名为《爱的联想》的微电影里他并不是导演,而是监制。贾樟柯曾执导过多部获奖电影,首部长片《小武》被法国《电影手册》赞誉为摆脱了中国电影的常规,是标志着中国电影复兴与活力的影片,2011年被第68届威尼斯国际电影节"地平线单元"邀请担任评委会主席。