15 - Performance and policy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2015
Summary
Time flies when you’re having fun.
Entertainment is a big and rapidly changing international business and the study of its economic characteristics is still at an early stage. As a platform for such studies, this book has attempted to convey a sense of the industry’s dynamics in relation to the financial and economic features that enduringly characterize entertainment enterprises. This closing chapter provides a review and summary of those features and also discusses the choices and implications for making public-policy decisions.
Common elements
As seen in Chapter 1, leisure time – broadly defined as time not spent at work – has been expanding slowly, if at all, in recent years. And over the long run, the potential to expand leisure time depends notably on the rate of gain in economic productivity, which is in turn affected by the rate of technological development.
If we deduct life-sustaining activities from nonwork time, we have what is known in the vernacular as “free time.” But time is never really free in an economic sense because there are always alternative-opportunity costs. Entertainment, defined as that which has the effect of pleasurably diverting the psyche, thus competes for – and is ultimately limited by – the amount of free time available.
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- Entertainment Industry EconomicsA Guide for Financial Analysis, pp. 565 - 574Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014