Skip to main content
Log in

Explaining Post-War Cinema Attendance in Great Britain

  • Published:
Journal of Cultural Economics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper models the interaction between cinema admissions and cinema supply in response to changes in exogenous variables, chiefly competition from television viewing. The relationship is estimated empirically by applying near Vector Autoregression (VAR) techniques to a long run of British annual data from 1950 to 1997. The results indicate that sustained negative shocks to cinema demand throughout most of the period reduced the supply of screens, inducing further falls in admissions and closures until a new equilibrium was attained. More recently, the introduction of multiplex cinemas has interrupted and partially reversed this downward demand-supply spiral.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Becker, G.S. (1965) “A Theory of the Allocation of Time'. Economic Journal LXXV: 493-517.

    Google Scholar 

  • Browning, H.E. and Sorrell, A.A. (1954) “Cinemas and Cinema-Going in Great Britain”. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A (General) 117: 133-165.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cameron, S. (1986) “The Supply and Demand for Cinema Tickets: Some U.K. Evidence”. Journal of Cultural Economics 10 (1): 38-62.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cameron, S. (1988) “The Impact of Video Recorders on Cinema Attendance”. Journal of Cultural Economics 12 (1): 73-80.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cameron, S. (1990) “The Demand for Cinema in the United Kingdom”. Journal of Cultural Economics 14 (1): 35-47.

    Google Scholar 

  • Enders, W. (1995) Applied Econometric Time Series. Wiley, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fernández-Blanco, V. and Baños-Pino, J. (1997) “Cinema Demand in Spain: A Cointegration Analysis”. Journal of Cultural Economics 21 (1): 57-75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Granger, C.W.J. (1969) “Investigating Causal Relations by Econometric Models and Cross-Spectral Methods”. Econometrica 37: 24-36.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hamilton, J. (1994) Time Series Analysis. Princeton University Press, Princeton.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maddala, G.S. (1992) Introduction to Econometrics (2nd Edition). Macmillan, New York.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pesaran, M.H. and Pesaran, B. (1997) Microfit (Version 4). Oxford University Press, Oxford.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ramsey, J. (1970) “Models, Specification Error and Inference: A Discussion of Some Problems in Economic Methodology”. Bulletin of the Oxford Institute of Economics and Statistics 32: 301-318.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sims, C. (1980) “Macroeconomics and Reality”. Econometrica 48: 1-49.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spraos, J. (1962) The Decline of the Cinema. Allen and Unwin, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vincendeau, V. (ed.) (1995) Encyclopedia of European Cinema. British Film Institute, London.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zellner, A. (1962) “An Efficient Method of Estimating Seemingly Unrelated Regressions and Tests for Aggregation Bias”. Journal of the American Statistical Association 57: 348-368.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Macmillan, P., Smith, I. Explaining Post-War Cinema Attendance in Great Britain. Journal of Cultural Economics 25, 91–108 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007630400082

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007630400082

Navigation