Movie Piracy and Displaced Sales in Europe: Evidence from Six Countries

Benedikt Herz and Kamil Kiljanski

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper presents estimates of lost movie sales due to unpaid movie consumption. We are the first to provide estimates that are recent, representative of the internet-using population, and cover multiple countries. Based on an online questionnaire with almost 30,000 respondents, we document that one unpaid (first) viewing of a movie displaces about 0.37 units of paid viewings. Using a back-of-the-envelope calculation, we show that this implies that unpaid movie viewings reduced movie sales in Europe by about 4.4% during the sample period. Lost sales differ substantially by country: they are in the range of 1.65% for Germany and 10.4% for Spain. We also find that 94% of lost sales are due to unpaid viewings by a small group of only 20% of consumers. Our findings have important implications for copyright policy.

Keywords: movie piracy; copyright; displacement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-09-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-ipr and nep-mkt
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:80817

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