Essays in Industrial Organization and Experimental Economics

Andrew Meisner, Purdue University

Abstract

The focus of this dissertation is two-fold. In the first two chapters I examine the release date decisions made by movie studios when releasing new films into theaters. New product introduction is an important part of the Industrial Organization literature, and the movie industry has a number of unique features which allow researchers the opportunity to address interesting, unresolved, questions. In my first chapter I examine whether separate divisions within a single family of studios behave like competitors (as is commonly assumed in the literature on the theory of divisionalization) or like collaborators. I find that separate divisions do seem to avoid competing with one another, however the burden of avoiding this intra-family competition seems to fall primarily on the smaller divisions. My second chapter focuses on the effect of movie piracy on foreign box office revenues. I find that piracy has a significant, negative, effect on foreign box office revenues, which varies in magnitude across countries. Movie studios appear to account for the overall threat of piracy when choosing foreign release dates, but don't seem to factor in the heterogeneity of the effect of piracy across countries into this decision. Finally, my third chapter is an experiment, which analyzes the effect of revealed peer responses on the answers given by students during in-class assessments.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Martin, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Economics

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