Two information aggregation mechanisms for predicting the opening weekend box office revenues of films: boxoffice prophecy and guess of guesses

David Court, Benjamin Gillen, Jordi McKenzie, Charles R. Plott*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Field tests were conducted on two new information aggregation mechanism designs. The mechanisms were designed to collect information held as intuitions about opening weekend box office revenues for movies in Australia. The principles on which the mechanisms operate and their capacity to collect information are explored. A pari-mutuel mechanism produces a predicted probability distribution over box office amounts that is, with the exception of very small films, indistinguishable from the actual revenues. The second mechanism is based on guessing the guesses of others and when applied under conditions where incentives for accuracy are unavailable still performs well against data.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)25–54
Number of pages30
JournalEconomic Theory
Volume65
Issue number1
Early online date16 Feb 2017
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2018

Keywords

  • Box office
  • Experiment
  • Field test
  • Information aggregation
  • Mechanism design
  • Prediction market

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