nep-cul New Economics Papers
on Cultural Economics
Issue of 2016‒07‒09
three papers chosen by
Roberto Zanola
Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale

  1. Movie success in a genre specific contest: Evidence from the US film industry By Kaimann, Daniel; Pannicke, Julia
  2. Do preferences for pop music converge across countries? Empirical evidence from the Eurovision Song Contest By Budzinski, Oliver; Pannicke, Julia
  3. Art as an investment in a historical perspective By David, Geraldine

  1. By: Kaimann, Daniel; Pannicke, Julia
    Abstract: This article examines the economic effect of computer animation movie success by using data from all widely released feature length movies between 2011 and 2014, and all computer animated movies in North America between 1995 and 2014. We show that computer animated movies successfully attract families, parents, children, and teenagers and outperform other major movie genres (e.g., action, com-edy or drama). This research sample also provides initial evidence that, counter to industry thinking in the film business, stardom is not directly associated with movie success.
    Keywords: motion pictures economics,movie genre,computer animated movies
    JEL: C31 L10 L82 M21
    Date: 2015
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:tuiedp:98&r=cul
  2. By: Budzinski, Oliver; Pannicke, Julia
    Abstract: The combination of the digitalization of cultural goods and facilitated cross-border availability through the internet fuels a globalization process that is of-ten said to cause a homogenization of demand across countries, in particular, for entertainment goods as music and movies. In the markets for music, this implies that the same hits and the same artists should be popular across countries and cultures. In order to test this hypothesis, we analyze historical voting data of the Eurovision Song Contest, the worldwide biggest live broadcasted international music competi-tion between all countries of the European Broadcasting Union. It covers the period from 1975-2016 where digitalization and internet availability were invented and evolved into mass phenomena. Consequently, according to the outlined theory of homogenization of preferences, voting should have become more concentrated on the leading artists and less focused on regional differences in taste. For the purpose of detecting concentration trends in the points allocation, we employ different indi-cators for measuring concentration. First, we calculate a concentration ratio, repre-senting the accumulated total number of points of the top three, five and ten-placed countries in each year of the contest. Second, we calculate the Herfindahl-Hirschman-Index (HHI) and, third, the Gini-Coefficient for each year. Furthermore, we test trend-lines for statistical significance. The results show, that our analysis cannot support the thesis of preference homogenization. We find no significant trend towards pref-erence convergence. In contrast, some of the employed indicators and methods point towards significant, albeit weak, deconcentration trends in voting behavior for the contest.
    Keywords: cultural convergence,Eurovision Song Contest,media economics,cultural economics,empirical economics
    JEL: Z10 L82 F60 C01
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:tuiedp:101&r=cul
  3. By: David, Geraldine (Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management)
    Abstract: This dissertation studies the price formation mechanisms on the art market. More specifically, it uses historical data to test the impact of several factors on the French art market between 1860 and 1950 and on the Belgian art market between 1945 and 1950. The first paper investigates the link between art dealers’ management and artwork pricing. We study the determinants of profit for an art dealer, from the management of inventories to the identity of the buyers. The second paper deals with macro factors and their influence on prices evolution in the first half of the 20th century French art market. This market was the most important art market until the Second World War but has been omitted from previous studies. We compute the risk-return characteristics in order to see if previous studies were downward biased. Further we analyze the art market in times of crisis: the two World Wars and the Great Depression. The third paper (published in Financial History Review) explores the question of art acting as a capital flight tool by focusing on a very particular episode in history: the monetary reform that occurred in Belgium after the Second World War and drastically reduced the money supply. It also addresses the question of the link between art prices and the money supply.
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tiu:tiutis:2361da4b-d827-4cae-91ce-1e128715553d&r=cul

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