h monopoly control over
the product through copyright, etc. The law of “comparative advantage” -- where various
countries are understood to have certain resources or capacities that allow them to offer to
the world goods for sale on terms that are advantageous to them--do not apply in the
cultural marketplace. This is because Hollywood has a permanent advantage with respect to
low marginal cost of goods that other countries cannot equal.
(viii) cultural commodities as public goods: why economists misunderstand
cultural markets
Public goods have two distinct features: they are (i) non-excludable (people who don’t pay to
use the good cannot be barred from using it); and (ii) they are non-rivalrous (one person’s
use of a good does not reduce its availability to others); e.g., a person who doesn’t pay
taxes can enjoy fresh air or visit a public park. Public goods have been referenced in other
sections of AC640, as you may recall, notably in reference to Paul Rutherford’s article on
social marketing and Howard Rheingold’s on “technologies of cooperation.”
Cultural commodities share many features with public goods; e.g., you can watch broadcast
TV for free, or borrow books from a library with no or minimal cost. Economists often don’t
understand cultural markets because they are used to thinking about the market as defined
by private goods, and as conforming to the normal laws of supply and demand, etc.
Economists idealize “efficient market英语论文网 【http://www.51lunwen.org】s” where consumers have the information they need to
make purchases; this is difficult with cultural goods, since we can’t know whether we’ll like a
cultural good until we try it.
(ix) the cultural industries and their means to control market patterns
Most cultural products fail to succeed in the marketplace or make money. Cultural industries
thus depend on “hits” and “blockbusters”; in Hollywood, they refer to “tentpole pictures”
which can begin a franchise or lead to lucrative merchandising deals, e.g. the “Harry Potter”
movies. Cultural products benefit by release in large markets (e.g., US) because they can
recover costs quickly, and thus take advantage of their low marginal cost in other markets (e.g., Canada, overseas). Hollywood enjoys a permanent advantage over other film-making
countries due to the size of the American market, ensuring that the “risk/reward” dynamic
favours the producers. The cultural industries tend to “oligopoly” – a few major film studios, a
few large TV and cable networks, a few major publishers of books and magazines,
concentration in the newspaper industry –- because this gives them control over the
otherwise fickle nature of the cultural marketplace.
Note: there is no “alternatives and applications” section in unit 4, since the unit notes are
already long. This concludes week 7’s material.
Unit Four Notes: Week 8
Keywords:
. policy and regulation
. the network society
. timeless time an
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