Modeling the migration of cultural goods: a macro-economic study of domestic Chinese cinema

This article investigates the migration of cultural goods such as movies in the burgeoning commercial exhibition marketplace of China. Based on prior research on the movie industry and theatrical releases, this empirical study models the dynamic relationships between cinema attendance and the number of cinema screens in response to consumer mindset shifts in terms of predetermined and exogenous variables. These relationships are established and estimated by applying the Vector Auto-Regression (VAR) and Seemingly Unrelated Regressions (SUR) techniques. The regression analyses are executed over 96 observations spanning from May 2005 to April 2013. A key empirical finding is that cultural goods such as movies are affected by a variety of market and economic factors. Another significant finding is that income and admission price will not significantly affect the Chinese cinema-goers’ consumption behaviors, whereas they may alter the market expectation of the exhibitors. In recent years, the prevalence of Internet options has further promoted a more competitive market of choice, quality, and prices. This is an area worthy of further scholarly investigation.     

Piracy of digital products: A critical review of the theoretical literature

Digital products can be copied at almost no cost and are subject to non-commercial copying by final consumers. Because the copy of a copy typically does not deteriorate in quality, copies can become available on a large scale basis – this can be illustrated by the surge of file-sharing networks. In this paper we provide a critical overview of the theoretical literature that addresses the economic consequences of end-user copying. We analyze basic models of piracy, models with indirect appropriation, models with network effects, and models with asymmetric information. We discuss the applicability of the different modeling strategies to a number of industries such as software, video and computer games, music, and movies.     

英文原版电影对英美文化习得的影响

深入了解英美文化是保证跨文化交际有效进行的关键因素之一。为达到提高学习者深层文化认知能力的目的,在教授英美文化时教学者利用英文原版电影的作用和影响,可以让学习者更多更广地了解英美文化的种种特征。而在利用原版影片掌握英美文化的同时必须遵循有关的原则及应用策略。这种方式也是了解英美文化的一种优势。     

The impact of cultural exceptions: audiovisual services trade and trade policy

Audiovisual services such as music and movies in digital formats have gained substantial importance over the last decade, while remaining one of the sectors with the lowest number of commitments by WTO members. Based on a novel data set, this article analyses the role of trade restrictions on audiovisual services in a gravity model. We find that countries with WTO commitments trade more audiovisual services, while both exports and imports are lower for countries which impose policies to curb inflows of foreign cultural services.     

Virtual proximity and audiovisual services trade

Audiovisual services such as music and movies in digital formats have gained substantial importance over the last decade. This paper analyses audiovisual services in a gravity model framework. In particular, we explore the role of virtual proximity – a new proxy for cultural proximity based on bilateral hyperlinks and bilateral website visits between countries – and find that ‘virtually-proximate’ countries trade significantly larger amounts of audiovisual services. Our results show that virtual proximity also has a larger impact on trade in audiovisual services than on total services trade. Moreover, in line with Hanson and Xiang (2011), our analysis indicates that in the audiovisual services sector, global fixed export costs dominate bilateral fixed export costs for most countries in our sample.     

The effectiveness of pre-release advertising for motion pictures: An empirical investigation using a simulated market

We use data on a movie’s stock price as it trades on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a popular online market simulation, to study the impact of movie advertising. We find that advertising has a positive and statistically significant effect on expected revenues, but that the effect varies strongly across movies of different “quality”. The point estimate implies that the returns to advertising for the average movie are negative.     

MANAGING THE SUPPLY OF SHORT‐LIFE PRODUCTS. A DURATION ANALYSIS APPROACH USING THE UK FILM INDUSTRY

Movies are uncertain products. Nobody knows much about them prior to their screening and their attempt to survive in the risky motion picture market week by week. This paper studies short‐life products using the example of the UK film industry, including high and low‐budget films. Using a clog‐log methodology and a sample of 552 films, the empirical results highlight the importance of the distributor's strategy and word‐of‐mouth for success in experience goods industries. Two strategies, cross‐subsidisation and opportunity cost, not previously addressed are considered. The results show these effects to be especially significant for low budget movies.     

gLucifer: next generation visualization framework for high-performance computational geodynamics

High-performance computing provides unprecedented capabilities to produce higher resolution 4-D models in a fraction of time. Thus, the need exists for a new generation of visualization systems able to maintain parity with the enormous volume of data generated. In attempting to write this much data to disk, each computational step introduces a significant performance bottleneck, yet most existing visualization software packages inherently rely on reading data in from a dump file. Available packages make this assumption of postprocessing at quite a fundamental level and are not very well suited for plotting very large numbers of specialized particles. This necessitates the creation of a new visualization system that meets the needs of large-scale geodynamic modeling. We have developed such a system, gLucifer, using a software framework approach that allows efficient reuse of our efforts in other areas of research. gLucifer is capable of producing movies of a 4-D data set “on the fly” (simultaneously with running the parallel scientific application) without creating a performance bottleneck. By eliminating most of the human efforts involved in visualizing results through postprocessing, gLucifer reconnects the scientist to the numerical experiment as it unfolds. Data sets that were previously very difficult to even manage may be efficiently explored and interrogated without writing to disk, and because this approach is based entirely on memory distributed across as many processors as are being utilized by the scientific application, the visualization solution is scalable into terabytes of data being rendered in real time.     

Does the star power matter?

This study investigates the role of superstars in the Korean movie industry. We apply a two-step approach: the first step is to test the significance of the star power during 1988–1999 in Korea; the second step is to estimate the magnitude of star power. The appearance of a star actor increases the probability of a hit or success by 15–19% and star power is higher than a director power. A domestic award is associated with positive performance. We find that the top 15 players among 68 actors and actresses significantly impacts on the success of movies.     

Movie piracy and sales displacement in two samples of Chinese consumers

Intellectual property piracy is widely believed, by authorities in both US industry and government, to be rampant in China. Because we lack evidence on the rate at which unpaid consumption displaces paid consumption, we know little about the size of the effect of pirate consumption on the volume of paid consumption. We provide direct evidence on both the volume of unpaid consumption and the rate of sales displacement for movies in China using two surveys administered in late 2008 and mid-2009. First, using a survey of Chinese college students’ movie consumption and an empirical approach parallel to a similar recent study of US college students, we find that three quarters of movie consumption is unpaid and that each instance of unpaid consumption displaces 0.14 paid consumption instances. Second, a survey of online Chinese consumers reveals similar patterns of paid and unpaid movie consumption but a displacement rate of roughly zero. We speculate on the small displacement rate finding relative to most of the piracy literature.     

发展文化旅游促进大连文化名城建设

建设文化名城是大连市“十一五”时期文化发展目标,大连市可采取以发展文化旅游促进大连文化名城建设的对策。文化旅游对大连文化名城建设具有重要作用,其重要作用有文化旅游能提供大连文化名城建设资金、能促动大连文化名城创意形成和实施、能加速传播大连文化和提高大连文化知名度。发展大连文化旅游的对策是提升大连文化旅游吸引物的吸引力,发展大连文化旅游纪念品、形成文化旅游纪念品基地,建立“三大主题的”大连文化旅游体系,利用影视剧和实景舞台剧提升大连文化旅游品位和影响力,制定和改进大连文化旅游人才快速成长的政策与环境。     

RATINGS AND REVENUES: EVIDENCE FROM MOVIE RATINGS

Ratings and report cards provide a relatively cheap way to influence consumer and producer decisions. We examine the specific case of movie ratings and find that receiving a mature rating (rated R) reduces a movie's box office revenues by 20%. We focus on the specific role of ratings by constructing a mature content index for each movie and compare movies with similar amounts of mature content, but that received different ratings. We also exploit the fact that the movie rating system places specific guidelines on the number of F‐words that are allowed at each content rating. (JEL D0, L82)     

An Approach to a Visual Language for Convective Fluid Flows: Visualization of Geophysical Simulations

It was known that deep within numbers and binary data from simulations of geophysical convective flows resided various patterns. Two models of convective fluid flows were being considered. One was a model of two-dimensional (768 × 256) air convection with finite Prandtl number of one and Rayleigh number of 10⁸?10¹⁰, and another was a model of three-dimensional (up to 120 × 120 × 90) mantle convection with infinite Prandtl number and Rayleigh number of 10⁶?10⁸. Clearly, phenomena existed which superceded each individual dimensionless computer model to provide a piece of information regarding actual fluid flows. The problem was how to find, prove, and communicate these patterns and phenomena for convection simulations with gigabytes of data. In a search for such an analytical and communicative tool, the alternative of visualization was considered. The need for visualization was recognized and discussed. Then, utilizing both two- and three-dimensional models of high Rayleigh number convection, basic techniques of style and content were developed. Applications of the visualization techniques were designed utilizing IBM’s Data Explorer in order to create communicative images and movies, and after the applications, the problems of data storage and transfer became apparent. Throughout the process though, it became clear how important the language of vision actually could be in the geophysics community. In a field in which words such as plumes and internal waves have in ways replaced mathematics as the basic language for science, there is a need for another resource, another language-the visualization of convective fluid flows.     

THE EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE ON THE QUALITY AND VARIETY OF INFORMATION PRODUCTS†

Anecdotal evidence suggests that producers of information products (TV programs, movies, computer software) may respond to potentially cost-saving technological change by increasing, rather than reducing, their total production investments in the ‘first copy’ of each product, possibly at the expense of product variety. Comparative statics show that under reasonable assumptions about consumer demand and production technology, competitive firms in a monopolistically competitive industry are in fact induced to increase first-copy investments as a result of either what we define as ‘quality-enhancing’ or ‘cost-reducing’ types of technological advance, whereas product variety either falls or stays the same. Results suggest that contrary to often held expectations, potentially cost-saving technological advances in information industries may result in greater market concentration.     

Games superheroes play: Teaching game theory with comic book favorites

The valuable insights of game theory sometimes remain out of reach for students who are overwhelmed by the subject's complexity. Comic book applications of game theory, with superheroes as players, can facilitate enthusiasm and classroom interaction to enhance the learning of game theory. Drawing from content in superhero movies and books, the authors construct games to illustrate pure-strategy Nash equilibrium, Bayes-Nash equilibrium, mixed strategies, sub-game perfection, and perfect Bayesian equilibrium. To help instructors build students' skills in finding and interpreting game solutions, they translate comic book scenarios into specific game forms; however, not all scenarios are obvious so they suggest instructors help students develop their own game-theoretic judgments to determine what game forms, payoffs, and solution concepts might be appropriate for understanding a situation.     

Modelling movie attendance with seasonality: evidence from China

High-frequency data improves the timeliness of movie attendance forecasts, but also results in the issue of seasonality. The main objective of this article is to build and test a novel movie attendance model that considers seasonality. Based on the Bass model, we combine an intertemporal demand shift pattern and the binary elements of seasonality – weekends and holidays – and propose a model called DISBM. We chose a sample of 58 movies released in China in 2013 to evaluate our proposal. The empirical results suggest that DISBM has better performance than other seasonal models. We demonstrate that the intertemporal demand shift results in weekend fluctuations, while the extra demand causes the seasonal holiday effect. The intent of this study is to better understand various movie attendance diffusions given different seasonal effects, in order to develop corresponding marketing strategies.     

Quasi-adiabatic shear zones in the lithosphere: numerical and experimental approaches

Continental breakup, or compressive lithosphere scale faulting, requires a physical mechanism for wholesale faulting of the lithosphere. We compared numerical and experimental models for the nucleation of quasi-adiabatic shear bands in polyvinylchloride (PVC) with those in an idealized viscoelastoplastic mantle with olivine rheology. In both materials fault nucleation is caused by elastic stress concentration on pre-existing imperfections, with localized yielding confined to its vicinity. Faulting occurs rapidly after the initial elastic energy in the system is charged sufficiently to cause wholesale yielding. Propagation of the fault, monitored by looking at the dissipation of plastic energy, reveals migration of a sharp, thermal-mechanical “crack”- like instability, which appears in the temperature field as a slightly diffused signal. The initial temperature rise in the crack is subtle but increases suddenly when the plate is severed. This autocatalytic behavior has also been described in ductile polymers, which can be used as mechanical analogues. We suggest that elastoplastic coupling in quasi-adiabatic shear banding is a key for fast (< 1 Ma) nucleation of shear zones. These nonlinear phenomena will be illustrated for both experimental and numerical results by nine movies     

Visualization of tsunami waves with Amira package

In recent years numerical investigations of tsunami wave propagation have been spurred by the magnitude 9.3 earthquake along the Andaman–Sumatra fault in December, 2004. Visualization of tsunami waves being modeled can yield a much better physical understanding about the manner of wave propagation over realistic seafloor bathymetries. In this paper we will review the basic physics of tsunami wave propagation and illustrate how these waves can be visualized with the Amira visualization package. We have employed both the linear and nonlinear versions of the shallow-water wave equation. We will give various examples illustrating how the files can be loaded by Amira, how the wave-heights of the tsunami waves can be portrayed and viewed with illumination from light sources and how movies can be used to facilitate physical understanding and give important information in the initial stages of wave generation from interaction with the ambient geological surroundings. We will show examples of tsunami waves being modeled in the South China Sea, Yellow Sea and southwest Pacific Ocean near the Solomon Islands. Visualization should be a part of any training program for teaching the public about the potential danger arising from tsunami waves. We propose that interactive visualization with a web-portal would be useful for understanding more complex tsunami wave behavior from solving the 3-D Navier–Stokes equation in the near field.