• Review of Culture and Economy
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.105-128
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• 2017

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of distributors on the movie exhibition by distributor types. For the analysis, the concept 'screen elasticity of box office' is adopted. Using the weekly screening data of 94 hit movies released in Korea in 2014 and 2015, the panel analysis estimates the 'screen elasticity of box office' with the Hausman-Taylor estimator. The results show that the screen elasticity of box office is smaller for vertically integrated distributors(CJ E&M and Lotte Entertainment) and Hollywood distributors than the local distributors(Showbox and NEW) that do not own integrated cinemas. This means that exhibitors allocate a larger number of screens to vertically integrated distributors and Hollywood distributors. As the two distributor groups had higher market share during the period, the results imply that the screen elasticity is related to the market performance of distributors. Smaller screen elasticity of the vertically integrated distributors might be related not to the ownership to theaters but to higher market share of the distributors.