CEF.UP – ECO- MaR Seminar/Webinar

Tuesday – March 28^th, 2023, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“The logics of non-commerciality in the cinematic ecosystem”

Christopher Mathieu – Lund University

Abstract:

“Film is one of the most expensive and commercially oriented art forms. It is estimated that the average cost of producing a Hollywood (American major studio) feature film is USD 65-75m, with approximately half as much again (about USD 35m) spent on marketing (Studiobinder 2013). The sums are high, and the ratio of marketing budget to production cost is indicative of a high commercial interest and effort. The sums are lower for non-Hollywood films, but the commercial orientation is in most cases similar. However, non-commercial films (defined here as film projects and products that neither have an intention or demand to generate profit or even recoup financial investment) and logics of non-commerciality exist and play various roles in the wider cinematic ecosystem. Several distinct non-commercial subsystems exist within the wider cinematic ecosystem. Some have virtually no interaction with the dominant commercial systems, often meeting other contemporary societal goals (Miller 2016; Kerr 1993), while others play direct and specific roles for the commercial mainstream (Fox 2022; Brown 2014; Cuzner 2009). Focusing on live-action fiction as opposed to documentary or animation film, and production as opposed to non-commercial exhibition (Santos & Miranda 2022) this article maps: the various logics behind non-commercial filmmaking; the various values realised by non-commercial film in different contexts; past, current, and potential future relationships with the commercial domain; and the managerial challenges and possibilities afforded by non-commercial film production.”

CEF.UP – ECO Seminar/Webinar

Monday – May 15^th, 2023, at 1:00 p.m. | Room 305| Online

“What We Do in the Shadows: How Urban Density Facilitates Information Diffusion”

Evan Kresch– Oberlin College (joint work with Qing Zhang)

Abstract:

“Does urban density facilitate the diffusion of information? This paper exploits plausibly exogenous variation generated by a unique national policy in China that requires all residential buildings to receive sufficient hours of sunshine. The policy creates higher degrees of restriction on density at higher latitudes, where longer shadows require buildings to be further apart. Data on individual housing projects across China reveal that the cross-latitude variation in regulatory residential Floor Area Ratio can be described quite well by a formula linking structure density to latitude through the solar elevation angle. These differences in building density further induce differences in population density and land prices across latitudes. Using differential topic dynamics on a national petition platform to measure information diffusion, this paper shows that people respond to shifts in government attention with varying speeds across latitudes. Increases in local government reply rate to a topic raises the volume of subsequent posts on the same topic, exhibiting an S-shaped time trajectory consistent with local information diffusion about shifting government priorities. These responses are systematically faster in southern cities, where density is higher. Survey evidence further indicates that otherwise similar individuals are more likely to gossip about public issues in a southern city.”