Film Production And Economic Performance: Should South Africa Invest In Movies?

Abstract

The movie industry is increasingly recognised as a possible avenue for improving economic performance. This study focuses on film production and its influence on South African economic growth (per capita income and employment between 1970 and 2020). Our autoregressive lag distributive (ARDL) estimates on a loglinearised endogenous growth model augmented with creative capital indicate that the production of movies has no significant effects on long-run GDP growth, per capita GDP and employment. The baseline regressions find a short-run positive and significant influence of film production on per capita income and are devoid of long-run effects. However, re-estimating the regressions with interactive terms between movie production and i) government spending ii) foreign direct investment, improve the significance of film regression coefficients which all turn positive and significant, for government spending, and negative for foreign direct investment. Our results indicate that foreign investment crowds out domestic investment whilst government investment in movies is growth-enhancing.