Resumen de Do Movie Majors Really Collude? Indirect Evidence from Release Schedules

Luisa Fernanda Gutiérrez Navratil, Víctor María Fernández Blanco, Luis Orea Sánchez, Juan Prieto Rodríguez

• Major Hollywood films studios and their affiliated local distributors have a dominant market share in the main international movie markets, but their competitive behavior has come under suspicion. In 2006, the Spanish Competition Court fined these Majors for anticompetitive practices. Our aim is to evaluate the presence (or absence) of collusive behavior among Majors during the 2002-2009 period.

  Because the release date is a critical variable of competition, we test whether Majors are coordinating their release schedules. Our results suggest that Majors achieve a larger degree of coordination in their release schedules than other distributors.