Oscar awards and foreign language film production: Evidence for a panel of countries

Abstract

Based on the model proposed by Hui and Png (Am Econ Rev 92(2):217–220, 2002), this article provides evidence of the relationship between Oscar awards and movie production. Panel data including 53 countries for the period 2005–2017 are used. Estimation results for the full sample show a positive relationship between Oscar wins and movie production. The results across subsamples reveal that Oscar wins in the category of “Best Foreign Language Film” (BFLF) and nominations in the four major categories (best picture, actor, actress and director) are positively correlated with movie production for a sample of middle-income countries. Strikingly, the estimations show a negative correlation between movie production and nominations in the BFLF category for high-income countries. The results are fairly robust to the introduction of control variables and different estimation methods.