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How Motion Pictures Industrialized Entertainment

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  • Bakker, Gerben

Abstract

Motion pictures constituted a revolutionary new technology that transformed entertainment—a rival, labor-intensive service—into a non-rival commodity. Combining growth accounting with a new output concept shows productivity growth in entertainment surpassed that in any manufacturing industry between 1900 and 1938. Productivity growth in personal services was not stagnant by definition, as current understanding has it, but instead was unparalleled in some cases. Motion pictures’ contribution to aggregate GDP and TFP growth was much smaller than that of general purpose technologies steam, railways, and electricity, but not insignificant. An observer might have noted that “motion pictures are everywhere except in the productivity statistics.†“So long as the number of persons who can be reached by a human voice is strictly limited, it is not very likely that any singer will make an advance on the £10,000 said to have been earned in a season by Mrs. Billington at the beginning of the last century, nearly as great as that which the business leaders of the present generation have made on the last.†1Alfred Marshall

Suggested Citation

  • Bakker, Gerben, 2012. "How Motion Pictures Industrialized Entertainment," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(4), pages 1036-1063, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:72:y:2012:i:04:p:1036-1063_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Crafts, Nicholas & Bakker, Gerben & Woltjer, Pieter, 2015. "A Vision of the Growth Process in a Technologically Progressive Economy: the United States, 1899-1941," CEPR Discussion Papers 10995, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Jordi McKenzie, 2023. "The economics of movies (revisited): A survey of recent literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 480-525, April.
    3. Gerben Bakker & Nicholas Crafts & Pieter Woltjer, 2019. "The Sources of Growth in a Technologically Progressive Economy: The United States, 1899–1941," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(622), pages 2267-2294.
    4. Bakker, Gerben, 2012. "Adopting the rights-based model: music multinationals and local music industries since 1945," Economic History Working Papers 47507, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    5. Bakker, Gerben, 2014. "Soft power: the media industries in Britain since 1870," Economic History Working Papers 56333, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.
    6. Bakker, Gerben, 2012. "Sunk costs and the dynamics of creative industries," Economic History Working Papers 49081, London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History.

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