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

Ricard Gil and Ryan Lampe

The Journal of Economic History, 2014, vol. 74, issue 4, 987-1014

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.

Date: 2014
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