The pricing of soft and hard information: economic lessons from screenplay sales

This paper uses a unique data set on screenplay sales to learn how the information content of a sales pitch affects sale prices. This is one of the few studies that analyze “soft information” outside the banking industry. We find that “soft information” proxies, such as the descriptive complexity of a pitch, depress prices, in particular for less experienced writers, supporting the common industry view that high concept (short and simple) screenplays sell better. “Hard information” (measurable experience) variables are priced as well. We also find that large studios shun “soft information”, whereas small companies handle it better, as predicted by most theories. In the last part of the paper, we find that, surprisingly, buyers seem to be able to forecast the eventual success of a project based upon the purchased script, paying more for screenplays which will eventually culminate in more successful movies. In other words, perhaps “somebody knows something”. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013