(Press-News.org) Awards have an impact on Spanish movie productivity, since they increase internal and external distribution demand, but subsidies have no effect whatsoever on the productivity of the Spanish film industry. This is the conclusion of researchers at the University of Granada (UGR), who have studied the production of films in Spain.
"Awards increase the amount of films produced by increasing productivity. In other words film industry workers and companies are more productive and efficient. However, we did not detect that subsidies had any such effect on productivity", Henry Aray, co-author of the study and a researcher at the UGR, tells SINC.
The researcher says that the results published in the journal Applied economics letters show that "where there are subsidies, these should be like awards – in other words, companies should compete to win subsidies, which would also create another yardstick to be reached by people starting out in the film industry".
The data show that, with the same capital and workforce, production is higher when there are more awards, while subsidies have no effect, either positive or negative, on productivity "when seen as efficiency".
Subsidies can have a positive effect on recruitment. In other words, more money coming from subsidies leads to more employment. "But we were interested in measuring their effect on the productivity and efficiency of the film industry", says Aray.
To study this, the researchers began with the information published annually by Spain's Ministry of Culture (MCU) on film production, subsidies, awards, the number of companies working in film production, and the number of employees in the sector from 2002 to 2007.
Aside from the regional figures from the MCU database, the researchers also used the leisure and culture price index from the Consumer Price Index (IPC) of the National Statistics Institute (INE).
"We estimated cinematographic production according to capital and labour factors, in other words the resources that companies use to make a feature film, and we included the variables of subsidies and awards", describes Aray.
95% of Spanish movie production is concentrated in seven autonomous regions
Using these data, the experts looked at the autonomous regions that produce movies every year. "We only chose those regions so that the sample would be standardised. Andalusia, Catalonia, Galicia, Madrid, Navarre, the Basque Country and Valencia together represent more than 95% of the entire country's film production", the researcher explains.
INFORMATION:
Referencia bibliográfica:
Betty Agnani, Henry Aray "Subsidies and awards in movie production", Applied economics letters, 17 (15): 1509-1511, 2010. doi: 19.1080/13504850903035865.
Subsidies have no effect on Spanish cinema productivity
2010-12-21
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
A possible cause -- and cure -- for genital cancer in horses?
2010-12-21
Horses are prone to develop genital cancer, especially as they grow older. Male horses are more commonly affected than mares but both sexes suffer from the condition, which is extremely difficult to treat and may result in the animals' death. Because of the similarity of the disease to human genital cancer it seemed possible that a similar agent might be responsible. Several human genital cancers, including cervical tumours, are known to be caused by a papillomavirus infection, so Brandt and her coworkers used genetic techniques to look for papillomavirus DNA in tissue ...
Study finds food in early life affects fertility
2010-12-21
The reproductive success of men and women is influenced by the food they receive at an early stage in life, according to new research by the University of Sheffield.
The research, which was published online this month (17 December 2010) in the journal Ecology, is the first study of its kind to show that early life food can have a serious influence on the life-long fertility of individuals.
The research team, led by Dr Ian Rickard from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University, used a combination of church record data on births in 18th century Finland ...
Muscle filaments make mechanical strain visible
2010-12-21
Plastics-based materials have been in use for decades. But manufacturers are facing a serious hurdle in their quest for new developments: Substantial influences of the microscopic material structure on mechanical material properties cannot be observed directly. The synthetic polymer molecules are simply too small for microscopic observation in mechanical experiments. A team of physicists led by professor Andreas Bausch of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) has now developed a method that allows just these kinds of measurements. They present their results in Nature ...
When the zebra loses its stripes
2010-12-21
Milan, Italy, 20 December 2010 – The capacity to remember that a zebra has stripes, or that a giraffe is a four-legged mammal, is known as semantic memory. It allows us to assign meaning to words and to recall general knowledge and concepts that we have learned. The deterioration of these capacities is a defining feature of semantic dementia and can also occur in Alzheimer's disease. A group of French neurologists and neuropsychologists have now identified the elements of semantic memory which are the first to deteriorate and may have thus explained why a surprising phenomenon ...
Genome-wide hunt reveals links to abnormal rhythms behind sudden death, heart damage
2010-12-21
A study among almost 50,000 people worldwide has identified DNA sequence variations linked with the heart's electrical rhythm in several surprising regions among 22 locations across the human genome. The variants were found by an international consortium, including Johns Hopkins researchers, and reported Nov. 14 in the Nature Genetics advance online publication.
Among the notable discoveries were variations in two side-by-side genes that regulate electrically charged particles to produce signals that start contraction of the heart and register as pulsing waves seen on ...
Johns Hopkins faculty highly value involvement of nearby urban community for improving research
2010-12-21
A survey conducted by Johns Hopkins faculty found strong support among their peers for working more closely with the minority, inner-city community that surrounds the institution. Overall, 91 percent of faculty responders said closer ties make research more relevant to those it ultimately serves, and 87 percent said it improves the quality of research.
"This is a huge, stunning finding," says Nancy Kass, Sc.D., deputy director for public health at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. "Faculty are giving a ringing endorsement of how important working with ...
New software detects piping flaws
2010-12-21
New software developed by the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) and Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding (NGSB) may lead to a less expensive and less time consuming method to detect corrosion or other defects in a ship's pipes.
The copyrighted software, which is used to analyze digitized x-ray images to determine loss of wall thickness in pipes, was developed as the result of a six-month cooperative research and development agreement between SRNL and NGSB. SRNL has granted NGSB a license to commercialize and continue maturing the software ...
Reducing emissions from shipping: Commission's Joint Research Centre sets out some options
2010-12-21
Maritime transport causes about 4% of global man-made CO2 emissions which makes its carbon footprint approximately as high as Germany's. There is no regulation of international maritime transport emissions yet, but this is currently under discussion in the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In respect of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, shipping is the most environmentally-friendly mode of transport. However, if no action is taken, it is estimated that emissions from ships will increase by ...
Syracuse University researchers contribute new ideas to enhance efficiency of wind turbines
2010-12-21
One issue confronting the efficiency of wind as a promising renewable energy source is the wind itself—specifically, its changeability. While the aerodynamic performance of a wind turbine is best under steady wind flow, the efficiency of the blades degrades when exposed to conditions such as wind gusts, turbulent flow, upstream turbine wakes and wind shear.
Now, a new type of air-flow technology may soon increase the efficiency of large wind turbines under many different wind conditions.
Researchers from Syracuse University's L.C. Smith College of Engineering and ...
Scientists and physicians use genetic sequencing to identify and treat unknown disease
2010-12-21
A collaborative team of scientists and physicians at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin uses genetic sequencing to identify and treat an unknown disease.
For the one of the first times in medical history, researchers and physicians at The Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin sequenced all the genes in a boy's DNA to identify a previously-unknown mutation. The team was able not only to identify the mutation, but to develop a treatment plan using a cord blood transplant, and stop the course of the disease.
This ...