nep-cul New Economics Papers
on Cultural Economics
Issue of 2022‒04‒11
three papers chosen by
Roberto Zanola
Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale

  1. Optimal Inter-Release Time between Sequentially Released Products By Jackie Y. Luan; K. Sudhir
  2. Who Should Own the Past? By Maija Halonen-Aktawijuka; Evanjelos Parfilis
  3. Media Slant is Contagious By Philine Widmer; Sergio Galletta; Elliott Ash

  1. By: Jackie Y. Luan (Lavector); K. Sudhir (Cowles Foundation, Yale University; Cowles Foundation, Yale University)
    Abstract: Marketers routinely use timing as a segmentation device through sequential product releases.While there has been much theoretical research on the optimal introduction strategy of sequential releases, there is little empirical research on this problem. This paper develops an econometric model to empirically solve the inter-release timing problem: it involves (1) developing and estimating a structural model of consumers’ choice for sequentially released products and (2) using the estimates of the structural model to solve for the optimal inter-release time. The empirical application focuses on the movie industry, where we specifically address the issue of the inter-release time between a theatrical movie and its DVD version. We find that consumers are indeed forward looking; a shrinking movie-DVD release window does negatively impact box office revenues, but there is a tradeoff in that there is greater residual buzz from the movie marketing that supports the sales of DVD due to the shorter time window. This leads to an inverted U shaped relationship between movie-DVD release window and revenues, and the theater-DVD window that maximizes industry revenue for the average movie during the data period is 2.5 months.
    Keywords: Movies, sequential releases, entertainment industry, structural model, segmentation.
    Date: 2022–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2325&r=
  2. By: Maija Halonen-Aktawijuka; Evanjelos Parfilis
    Abstract: We examine restitution of cultural goods. We show that host country own-ership and location of the cultural good can be optimal when the host countryinvests in restoration and has indispensable technical skills. Full restitutionbecomes optimal when the host country completes restoration, while return inthe form of loan to the source country can be optimal when the source countrybecomes indispensable due to its cultural significance. Valuation changes cantrigger restitution, but do not pin down its optimal form. We apply our anal-ysis to the restitution of Icelandic manuscripts and the proposed loan of Beninbronzes to Nigeria.
    Date: 2022–03–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bri:uobdis:22/758&r=
  3. By: Philine Widmer; Sergio Galletta; Elliott Ash
    Abstract: This paper analyzes the influence of partisan content from national cable TV news on local reporting in U.S. newspapers. We provide a new machine-learning-based measure of cable news slant, trained on a corpus of 40K transcribed TV episodes from Fox News Channel (FNC), CNN, and MSNBC (2005-2008). Applying the method to a corpus of 24M local newspaper articles, we find that in response to an exogenous increase in local viewership of FNC relative to CNN/MSNBC, local newspaper articles become more similar to FNC transcripts (and vice versa). Consistent with newspapers responding to changes in reader preferences, we see a shift in the framing of local news coverage rather than just direct borrowing of cable news content. Further, cable news slant polarizes local news content: right-leaning newspapers tend to adopt right-wing FNC language, while left-leaning newspapers tend to become more left-wing. Media slant is contagious.
    Date: 2022–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2202.07269&r=

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