AMES Group Researchers Address International Conference in Spain

Alina Buzanakova and Evgeny Ozhegov, researchers at the HSE-Perm Group for Applied Markets and Enterprises Studies (AMES), presented the results of their research at the 19th International Conference on Cultural Economics at the University of Valladolid, Spain.

The conference is held by the Association for Cultural Economics International biannually to discuss the latest studies on the consumption of cultural products, participation in cultural events, the management and economics of cultural institutions, and the influence that culture has on economic development. In total, 170 scholars from the United States, Brazil, Australia, Japan, and other countries took place in the 2016 conference. The only representatives from Russia were researchers from the HSE campus in Perm.

Alina Buzanakova spoke about her research evaluating the demand for performances by the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre, a paper she co-authored with Evgeny Ozhegov. They revealed that demand for theatre performances is elastic, and that price elasticity depends on performance popularity. This means that performance quality and the place in the theatre have an impact on the audience’s sensibility to ticket price and their readiness to pay.

At the conference, Evgeny also presented his paper on cinema economics, ‘Do sequel movies earn more than non-sequels? Evidence from the U.S. box office’, co-authored with Denis Orlov, an HSE Perm graduate. The researchers determined the reasons behind higher box office receipts from sequels. One reason for sequels’ success is that producers decide to shoot sequels where they feel the first movie has been a success and there is sufficient potential. This means that only sequels that initially have high chances for success are released.

The papers by Alina Buzanakova and Evgeny Ozhegov both got positive feedback from conference participants and sparked interest among their colleagues thanks to their original choice of research subjects.

To read the papers, please see the conference programme, as well as the ACEI Working Paper Series.