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The Adoption of New Technologies: Understanding Hollywood's (Slow and Uneven) Conversion to Color

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2014

Ricard Gil
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, The John Hopkins Carey Business School, 100 International Drive, Baltimore, MD 21202. E-mail: ricard.gil@jhu.edu.
Ryan Lampe
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Department of Economics, California State University, East Bay, 25800 Carlos Bee Blvd. Hayward, CA 94542. E-mail: ryan.lampe@csueastbay.edu.

Abstract

Hollywood converted to sound in three years. In comparison, Hollywood's conversion to color required more than three decades, and included a three-year period in which the share of color movies declined from 58 to 31percent. We investigate this puzzling adoption profile using detailed data on 7,022 movies between 1940 and 1959. These data indicate differences in studio size and complementarity between genre and color impeded the rapid diffusion of color. These data also indicate that disadoption followed weak returns to a wave of color releases that were encouraged by the introductionof a low-cost color process.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2014 

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Footnotes

We wish to thank Brian Adams, Paul David, Jed DeVaro, Jenny Kuan, Shaun McRae, Pedro Mendi, Petra Moser, Anthony Niblett, Laura Owen, Matt Pyle, Jonah Rockoff, Christian Roessler, Zhu Wang, Gavin Wright, seminar participants at the 2013 International Industrial Organization Conference in Boston, SIEPR's Social Science and Technology Seminar, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the librarians at The Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the University of Southern California. Xiao Xiao Peng and Asad Khan provided excellent research assistance. Professor Lampe thanks the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University, the Driehaus College of Business, and the Department of Economics at DePaul University for financial support. All errors are our own.

References

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