Ready for a Close-Up: The Effect of Tax Incentives on Film Production in California

Abstract

Do motion picture incentives nudge productions to film in an adopting state, increase budgets, or hire more cast and filmmakers? Or do they simply subsidize productions that would have occurred regardless? Using California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program, the author exploits incentives given out by lottery to answer these questions. The author finds that 19% of films would have filmed in California even without a tax incentive, but that the offering of an incentive increased the probability of a film being made in California by 16 percentage points. Both production budgets and the number of cast and filmmakers increased in response to the offering of a tax incentive, and, in California specifically, they increased budget spent by 267% and the number of cast and filmmakers hired by 123%. The program also had differential impacts based on film type, with only nonindependents increasing budgets and the number of cast and filmmakers in California.

Flying Blind on Job Creation Policies? A Case Study of California

“…There are a few evaluations of California's film credits, only one of which provides evidence that might reflect a positive causal effect of the credits. Workman (2021) studied an earlier version (Film & Television Tax Credit Program 1.0) that had a randomization feature allowing rigorous evidence. Workman found that the offer of a tax credit increased the number of cast members and filmmakers in California by an average of 123%, and those firms that received a tax credit increased the number of cast members and filmmakers in California by an average of 388%.…”

A Study of The Aesthetic and Cultural Characteristics of Video Art in Mainland China in The Digital Age

“…However, in the face of the modernist trend and the general environment of contemporary art, Chinese video art started a little later, but its development was more rapid, from the initial video art, only after this year, it had already shifted to video technology [10]. In other words, the works created by different video artists [11] not only carry their diverse forms of thought, but also their personal characteristics. The emergence of this phenomenon, however, also means that there is a wide variation in the results of video art in mainland China.…”