Increasing returns to information and the survival of Turkish public theatre plays

Abstract

This paper investigates increasing returns to information and the survival of Turkish public theatre productions. Log size and rank relationship is found to display autocorrelated growth in a sample of 556 plays put on stage in the Turkish public theatre system in 12 different cities between 1998 and 2003. The lifetime of plays is also investigated and the features of plays are found not to matter for duration which can be explained by the non-profit nature of public theatre. However, the lifetimes of plays in more developed cities are longer than in less developed cities. In contrast to Broadway shows, the hazard function for Turkish public theatre plays is increasing in the number of performances.