A Comment on Effects of Economic Incentives in the American Film Industry : An Ecological Approach

O'Brien and Lane (2018) examines the popular use of film industry incentives by US states to promote economic growth. The authors claim that their findings indicate the presence of incentives is positively associated with filming, industry employment, and new industry establishments, which is inconsistent with other studies on the subject. This comment raises concerns regarding the data used to generate the estimates, which cast doubt on the veracity of the empirical findings