This study quantifies the impact of file sharing on the theatrical film industry. Using a large data set of torrent downloads observed on three popular peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks, we find evidence of a small and statistically significant sales displacement effect on theatrical...

Does Hollywood dominate world cinema markets with American taste, culture, and values through the exportation of films produced mainly for its domestic (US and Canada) market? Or does Hollywood supply the films that world audiences demand and, because of the logistics of distribution, screen...

In recent years, Australian films have failed to capture the public’s attention at the Australian box office. Why? Do Australians have an aversion to their own films? Or does the release strategy—advertising/publicity expenditure and opening number of screens—explain the...

Federal clean air regulations have spawned a proliferation of motor fuel types that have created differentiated markets for motor fuels, increased the cost of supplying these fuels, and reduced the capacity of the supply infrastructure. In this paper we examine wholesale gasoline prices in 99 US...

We examine the rate of motion-picture piracy across a sample of 26 diverse countries. The level of piracy is explained empirically by the level of income, the cost of enforcing property rights, the level of collectivism present in a country's social institution and the level of internet usage....

China's rapidly rising crude oil consumption has been a cause of concern, both for China's own energy security and the effects this rising demand has on world oil markets. However, one must disaggregate the domestic Chinese demand for petroleum products to reveal what sort of policy options...

Investment opportunities in electric power generation have changed dramatically since electricity industry restructuring first began. In contrast to regulated utilities adding capacity in line with central planning and regulation, power plant investment is now more often made by independent...

Are motion picture audiences influenced by box office reports? Do they `herd' after the leaders and ignore possibly better but less popular films? How important is a big opening to the revenue a film eventually earns? This paper develops a dynamical learning model of motion picture demand that...

In this paper we use nonparametric statistical tools to quantify motion-picture profit. We quantify the unconditional distribution of profit, the distribution of profit conditional on stars and sequels, and we also model the conditional expectation of movie profits using a nonparametric...