MARC Record from Library of Congress

LEADER: 02806nam a22002777a 4500
001 2008610531
003 DLC
005 20080814072433.0
007 cr |||||||||||
008 080613s2008 mau sb 000 0 eng
010 $a 2008610531
040 $aDLC$cDLC
050 00 $aHB1
100 1 $aMoretti, Enrico.
245 10 $aSocial learning and peer effects in consumption$h[electronic resource] :$bevidence from movie sales /$cEnrico Moretti.
260 $aCambridge, MA :$bNational Bureau of Economic Research,$cc2008.
490 1 $aNBER working paper series ;$vworking paper 13832
538 $aSystem requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
538 $aMode of access: World Wide Web.
500 $aTitle from PDF file as viewed on 6/13/2008.
530 $aAlso available in print.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references.
520 3 $a"Using box-office data for all movies released between 1982 and 2000, I test the implications of a simple model of social learning in which the consumption decisions of individuals depend on information they receive from their peers. The model predicts different box office sales dynamics depending on whether opening weekend demand is higher or lower than expected. I use a unique feature of the movie industry to identify ex-ante demand expectations: the number of screens dedicated to a movie in its opening weekend reflects the sales expectations held by profit-maximizing theater owners. Several pieces of evidence are consistent with social learning. First, sales of movies with positive surprise and negative surprise in opening weekend demand diverge over time. If a movie has better than expected appeal and therefore experiences larger than expected sales in week 1, consumers in week 2 update upward their expectations of quality, further increasing week 2 sales. Second, this divergence is small for movies for which consumers have strong priors and large for movies for which consumers have weak priors. Third, the effect of a surprise is stronger for audiences with large social networks. Finally, consumers do not respond to surprises in first week sales that are orthogonal to movie quality, like weather shocks. Overall, social learning appears to be an important determinant of sales in the movie industry, accounting for 38% of sales for the typical movie with positive surprise. This implies the existence of a large "social multiplier'' such that the elasticity of aggregate demand to movie quality is larger than the elasticity of individual demand to movie quality"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
710 2 $aNational Bureau of Economic Research.
830 0 $aWorking paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) ;$vworking paper no. 13832.
856 40 $uhttp://papers.nber.org/papers/w13832