economists go to the movies

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Nov 21 17:58:07 PST 2001


"Uniform Prices for Differentiated Goods: the Case of the

Movie-Theater Industry"

BY: LIRAN EINAV

Harvard University

Department of Economics

BARAK Y. ORBACH

Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton

Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:

http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=290813

Other Electronic Document Delivery:

http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/

SSRN only offers technical support for papers

downloaded from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection

location. When URLs wrap, you must copy and paste

them into your browser eliminating all spaces.

Paper ID: Harvard Law and Economics Discussion Paper No. 337

Date: October 2001

Contact: LIRAN EINAV

Email: Mailto:Leinav at kuznets.fas.harvard.edu

Postal: Harvard University

Department of Economics

Littauer Center

Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

Phone: 617-588-1402

Fax: 520-223-4973

Co-Auth: BARAK Y. ORBACH

Email: Mailto:BOrbach at cgsh.com

Postal: Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton

One Liberty Plaza

New York, NY 10006-1470 USA

ABSTRACT:

In any given movie theater, all movies are priced the same

regardless of their theatrical success and potential and

regardless of the general demand conditions. This phenomenon is

an extreme example of the practice of uniform pricing of

differentiated goods, for which traditional economic theories

provide no explanation. This paper studies the case of the

pricing practices in the movie-theater industry that appear to

be inferior in comparison to alternative pricing policies. We

examine various possible causes for the practice that may shed

light on the persistence of such inefficient pricing policies.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list