University of Calgary

Publications - 2004


 

An empirical analysis of milk addiction

Auld, Christopher
 

Big budgets, big openings, and legs: Analysis of the blockbuster strategy

Walls, W. D. and DeVany, A.

The blockbuster strategy---using big budgets, stars, and advertising to create high opening week box office grosses---is based on the theory that motion picture audiences follow an information cascade by choosing movies according to how heavily they are advertised, what stars are in them, and their revenue ranking in the box-office tournament. Opposed to this theory of choice based on herd-type behavior is the view that quality matters and that through the communication of personal quality information the audience will turn a non-informative cascade of the opening into an informed cascade in which quality signals dominate quantity signals. In this paper, we examine the blockbuster strategy using a sample of more than 2000 motion pictures exhibited in the US between 1985--96. Contrary to the blockbuster strategy, we find that the opening is less critical for successful than for unsuccessful films. The movie-going audience cannot be manipulated and a movie will be a hit only if it engages a positive word-of-mouth information cascade.

 

Campaign Contributions and Trade Policy: New Tests of Stolper-Samuelson

Beaulieu, Eugene
 

Competition Policy in Open Economies

Yuan, Lasheng and Hollis, Aidan
 

Conduit Entities: Implications of Indirect Tax-Efficient Financing Structures for Real Investment

Mintz, Jack
 

Does EU really encourage trade? The effect of EU market enlargement on Ukraine's trade policy.

Ivus, Olena
 

Financial Markets and Institutions: Canadian Edition.

Mishkin, Frederic S., Eakins, Stanley G. and Serletis, Apostolos
 

Foreign Aid, Innovation and Technology Transfer in a North-South Model with Learning by Doing

Gaisford, James and Bennarroch, M.
 

Fossil Electricity and CO2 Sequestration: How Natural Gas Prices, Initial Conditions and Retrofits Determine the Cost of Controlling CO2 Emissions

Keith, David and Johnson, Timothy L.
 

If It Ain't Broke, You Ain't Trying Hard Enough

McKenzie, Kenneth James in Bird, Richard Who Decides? Government in the New Millennium
 

Income Shifting, Investment and Tax Competition: Theory and Evidence from Provincial Taxation in Canada

Mintz, Jack and Michael Smart
 

Income Trusts and Shareholder Taxation: Getting it Right

Mintz, Jack and Lalit Aggarwal
 

Informational spillovers and the coordination of speculative investments

Gonzalez, Francisco M.
 

Instrument Choice in a Fishery

Boyce, John
 

International Commercial Policy Toward Agricultural Biotechnology: Issues and Evolution

Gaisford, James, Hobbs, J., Issac, G., Kerr, W. and Klein, K. in Evenson, R.E. and Santaniello, V. The Regulation of Agricultural Biotechnogy
 

International Trade, Species diversity and habitat conservation

Smulders, Sjak, van Soest, D. and Withagen, C.
 

"Investigation of the Economic Efficiency of Electricity Generation from Iran’s Thermal Power Plants"

Khademvatani, Asgar
 

Macroeconomics, Seventh Canadian Edition

Atkins, Frank
 

Motion picture pro fit, the stable Paretian hypothesis, and the curse of the superstar

De Vany, A. and Walls, W. D.
 

Preliminary Results of the London Congestion Charging Scheme

Shaffer, Blake and Santos, Georgina
 

Quality evaluations and the breakdown of statistical herding in the dynamics of box-office revenue

Walls, W. D. and DeVany, A.

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 reveals the influence of prior demand on current and future demand. The model shows that audience dynamics are complex and herding is fragile. We show that the path of box office revenue bifurcates into a hit and a non-hit branch four weeks into the run and these paths rapidly diverge thereafter.

 

Rethinking Kyoto

Gaisford, James, Kerr, W.A. and Pancoast, R.D.
 

Specific Decision and Strategy Vector Methods in Ultimatum Bargaining: Evidence on the Strength of Other-Regarding Behavior

Oxoby, Robert and McLeish, Kendra N.
 

Status, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Growth of the Underclass

Oxoby, Robert
 

Strategic Public Policy Toward Agricultural Biotechnology with Externalities in Developing Countries

Chattopadhyay, Anasuya and Horbulyk, Ted
 

Taxing Financial Activity

Mintz, Jack
 

The Dis-Integrating Canadian Labour Market? The Extent of the market Then and Now

Emery, Herbert and Coe, Patrick J.
 

The Doha Round: a New Agreement on Agriculture

Gaisford, James and Kerr, W.A. in Burakovsky, I., Handrich, L. and Hoffman, L. Ukraine's WTO Accession: Challenge for Domestic Economic Reforms
 

The Elementary Economics of Social Dilemmas

Eaton, B. Curtis
 

The influence of large-scale wind-power on global climate

Keith, David, DeCarolis, Joseph F., Denkenberger, David C., Lenschow, Donald H., Malyshev, Sergey L., Pacala, Stephen and Rasch, Philip J.
 

The Optimal Threshold for VAT

Mintz, Jack and M. Keen
 

Trade Barriers and Wage Inequality in a North-South Model with Technology-Driven Intra-Industry Trade

Gaisford, James, Beaulieu, E. and Benarroch, M.
 

Trade Barriers, Learning, and Wage Inequality in a North-South Product-cycle Model with an Endogenous Skill Decision

Beaulieu, Eugene
 

Trade, Growth and the Environment

Taylor, M. Scott and Copeland, Brian
 

Trade Pessimists vs Technology Optimists: Induced Technical Change and Pollution Havens

Smulders, Sjak and Di Maria, C.
 

Using the Wrong Discount Rate to Allocate a Marine Resource

Rowse, John
 

Where Did the Debt Come From?

Kneebone, Ronald D. and Chung, J. in in C. Ragan and W. Watson (editors), Is the Debt War Over?
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