20Sep/111
What it means to be patriotic, According to Mark Cuban
The most patriotic thing you can do.
Get out there and make a boatload of money. Enjoy the shit out your money. Pay your taxes.
Check out Blog Maverick.
1Apr/100
3D provides depth to the bottom line, for now
Originally posted on the Berkeley DMEC blog page.
The movie industry is experience some better times with box offices revenues already running 8.8% ahead of 2009 figures (itself a $10B year). A huge driver has been the versioning for 3D and IMAX for tent-pole movies. Increased traffic for 3D coupled with significant price increases (reported as much as a 26% bump) have continued to feed the hype. This has been some positive news in terms as revenue as studios expect a 12% drop in DVD sales.
The question is how marginal traffic will making a 3D movie bring in?
With How to Train Your Dragon opening at 27% lower than Dreamwork’s Monster Vs. Aliens may indicate that new features like 3D may not necessarily trump good ole word of mouth. Indeed, the willingness to pay for a superior 3D experience for the family may not be enough to cover the $40-$60 required to take a family to the movies.
To convert a 3D movie, it takes studios an estimated $30 M, will the ROI remain? Wish three more 3D movies coming down this season’s pipeline, 3D may fast becoming the new normal.
4Oct/091
I see MC curves [economics]
Dan Brown's latest book, "The Lost Symbol" sold an unprecedented 2 million copies in 2 weeks. Tim Hartford writes that part of the boost was driven (at least in the UK) by an unprecedented price war.
The Bookseller, an industry magazine, Waterstone’s offered a mere 50 per cent discount – £9.49 instead of £18.99. Tesco asked £7 and Asda £5. Asda’s book buyer celebrated “fantastic” sales, despite the fact that the store is thought to be losing £4 a copy. The old joke is made real: losing money on every sale, but making it up on volume. The Book Depository, an online retailer, grabbed headlines with a price of £4.99 – whereupon Amazon quickly cut prices to match. These prices have prompted many people in the industry to feats of rhetorical self-flagellation. Industry insiders complained to The Bookseller about “ridiculously aggressive discounting” and asked “how can the book trade take itself seriously?”
Tim then proceeds to outline the economic thinking behind perfect competition and price wars:
Every retailer has to charge a mark-up to cover overheads, and faces a tension between the immediate pressures of competition and the need to stay in business. Every item sold, even at the tiniest mark-up, is better than no sale at all. Yet if the mark-ups are too thin, bankruptcy will not be far away.
In other words, perfect competition will drive down the price down to almost the marginal cost of the item.
It's always nice when you see theory in practice.
10Sep/090
How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? [Economy]
Paul Krugman, let's it rip in the NY Times piece:
Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy. During the golden years, financial economists came to believe that markets were inherently stable — indeed, that stocks and other assets were always priced just right. There was nothing in the prevailing models suggesting the possibility of the kind of collapse that happened last year. Meanwhile, macroeconomists were divided in their views. But the main division was between those who insisted that free-market economies never go astray and those who believed that economies may stray now and then but that any major deviations from the path of prosperity could and would be corrected by the all-powerful Fed. Neither side was prepared to cope with an economy that went off the rails despite the Fed’s best efforts.
Read the entire article here.