‘A Video Lesson on the Price of Movie Popcorn’

Richard B. McKenzie is the Walter B. Gerken Professor Emeritus of Enterprise and Society at The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine. Here he is presenting ‘A Video Lesson on the Price of Movie Popcorn’

Also see: ‘Why Popcorn Costs So Much at the Movies’ by Richard B. McKenzie and Gordon Tullock,  The New World of Economics, 2012, Part 4, Chapter 14, pp. 219-234,

“ […] because theaters cannot be owned by movie producers and distributors (because of a series of court orders that date to the late 1940s), theaters have an incentive to hold down (relatively speaking) all ticket prices in order to increase the demand for popcorn (and other concessions), thus allowing theaters to hike their prices on popcorn and other concessions and their profits.”

 NOTE: Paul Merage co-invented the Hot Pocket microwaveable turnover.