1st Edition
Filmonomics Economists Discuss the Silver Screen
List of contributors xii
Editors’ introduction xvii
Acknowledgments xxi
SECTION 1
Money and happiness 1
1 Citizen Kane: The evils of industrial concentration 3
KATE ROCKETT AND PIERRE RÉGIBEAU
2 Wall Street versus Des Hommes et des Dieux: On greed and social responsibility 17
LUC RENNEBOOG
3 Farinelli and the reasons for the rise and fall of castrati 28
VICTOR GINSBURGH AND LUC LERUTH
4 Two tales of Crazy Rich Asians: Cooperation and inequality 41
JESSIE P.H. POON AND YUCHONG HAN
SECTION 2
Intergenerational transfers and family affairs 53
5 Trading Places: Luck and equality of opportunity 55
ALAIN TRANNOY
6 Narayama, a spaceship 69
PIERRE PESTIEAU AND MARIANNE DAVID
SECTION 3
Women in society 77
7 Cléo from 5 to 7: Existential well-being or economic utility? 79
REBECCA POWERS
8 The power of women’s collective action: Mirch Masala and Manthan challenge orthodox economic theory and local authority 88
BINA AGARWAL
9 Difret: Learning from a story of child marriage 99
MARTINA MENON, FEDERICO PERALI, NATHALIE PICARD AND VERONICA POLIN
SECTION 4
Adapting to social changes 117
10 The Last Samurai and the struggle for the heart of a discipline 119
CLAUDE DIEBOLT AND MICHAEL HAUPERT
11 The individual, the state, and economics in Indian films 130
JAHANGIR AZIZ
12 A Clockwork Orange 138
ANDRÉ DE PALMA
13 The Purple Rose of Cairo and the foundations of rationality 152
NICOLAS CURIEN
SECTION 5
Individualism, cooperation, and other behavioral patterns 167
14 The Strange Games of Dr. Strangelove 169
JEAN DRÈZE
15 Once Upon a Time in the West: Transportation infrastructure and economic development 178
EREZ BEN-AKIVA, MOSHE BEN-AKIVA, ENNIO CASCETTA, AND EMILE QUINET
16 Philosophy and economics in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged 193
ROBIN LINDSEY
17 Stopping a bank run in It’s a Wonderful Life 210
ROMAIN RANCIÈRE
18 The Hateful Eight 218
PATRICK VAN CAYSEELE
SECTION 6
Young Author Award 231
19 Garm Hava: The economics of discrimination and other grim tales 233
ROHIT JAMES JOSEPH
20 Coda – Algorithmic cinema 243
ANDRÉ DE PALMA AND LUC LERUTH
Index 249
Biography
André de Palma holds a PhD in Physics (supervised by Nobel Laureate I. Prigogine) from the Free University of Brussels and a PhD in Economics from the University of Burgundy. He has taught in the following institutions: Queen’s University, Canada; Northwestern University, USA; University of Geneva, Switzerland; and Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) Paris Saclay, France. He is an honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France and the Association française d’économie des transports. He is a founding member of the international association of Transport Economics. He is now Emeritus Chair Professor at CY Cergy-Paris University and a visiting researcher at Strasbourg and Laval, Canada Universities, and an instructor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He specializes in transportation economics, behavioural economics, industrial organization, and risk. He has also published outside the field of economics, including ‘L’addiction rationnelle dans une nouvelle de Stefan Zweig’ and ‘Ode à l’erreur,’ in 2021 (Quand la littérature nous est contée, La lettre volée, Edition de l’Université Libre de Bruxelles).
Luc Leruth is an associate researcher at the University of Clermont-Auvergne, France. He has an M.Sc. in Mathematics and an M.A. and a PhD in Economics. A former International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff member, he has led missions in numerous countries, was the head of the Fiscal Transparency Unit, secretary of the G10, and director of three Regional Technical Assistance Centers. He has also pursued an academic career, holding teaching positions at the Free University Brussels, the University of Liège, and the University of Essex. He was a member of Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE) and has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals. He has also pursued a literary career. His first novel, La 4ème Note, was published in August 2001, translated into Portuguese and Russian. It was the best-selling first novel at Gallimard for 2001 and a finalist of the Prince of Monaco “Best Young Author” biennial Award. His second novel, La Machine Magique, was also published in the Collection Blanche, Gallimard (2004). In collaboration with Jean Drèze, he is the author of Rumble in a Village (2020). His first play Le Daguerréotypiste malgré lui was published in 2022.
“Much research analyzes the economics of films and of the movie industry. By comparison, little exists about economics (and related social sciences) in films – how the characters make choices, how they interact, and the happy or tragic outcomes of their actions. This book fills that vacuum. Read it, then view (or re-view) the films discussed here, and you will acquire an amazing new and rich way of watching films and thinking about them.”
Avinash Dixit
, Sherrerd University Professor Emeritus, Princeton University
“Very well documented, this work will delight a wide audience intrigued by the economic themes conveyed by the films. I thank the authors for devoting an entire chapter to our Farinelli under the particular gaze of the economy of the castrati. Extremely interesting!”
Gérard Corbiau
, Film Director (Farinelli)
“Filmonomics is not only a fun book to read for movie lovers and social scientists. By highlighting the broad economic aspects present in famous movies, the authors make us rethink their content and learn some economics along the way.”
Gerard Roland,
E. Morris Cox Distinguished Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
“Economics explains (almost) everything. And everything is in films. This is a wonderfully eclectic set of short essays by a wide swathe of authors from different backgrounds. It is a joy to open up and engage the deeper thoughts that lie behind iconic, and some less known, and some rather obscure movies.”
Simon P. Anderson,
Commonwealth Professor of Economics, University of Virginia
‘Rarely have characters on screen been viewed from the lens of Homo Economicus. André de Palma and Luc Leruth in association with a few of the finest economists of our times revisit a selection of legendary characters on screen, and without compromising academic rigour, lucidly and fascinatingly explain their economic behaviour and concerns. A milestone work that not only enriches literature on cinema but will also aid screenplay writers.’
Danish Hussain, Actor, poet, storyteller, and theatre director
