** First of all I want to be completely honest with regards to the content of the texts in the reader. I had so much trouble getting through them.. and in the end so many questions came to mind, but unfortunately none of them useful for the assignment… Just didn’t understand what the deal was with these articles. Maybe someone would like to explain it to me? ;) Anyways…bit of a blur to me. But here goes…

H. Vogel – Entertainment Industry Economics

(Q) With regard to his ‘expected utility’ paragraph: what is the effect of the new developments like p2p shareware on the expected utility and how does it effect the pattern of demands for entertainment goods?

(A) With p2p being an enormously influential development of the past few years, the ‘normal’ ongoing pattern of people buying or demanding goods has shifted massively. In my opinion Vogel has left out one of the most important factors of why and how we purchase goods and how the expected utility changes because of it.

E. Castronova – On Virtual Economies

(Q) If virtual games can in fact, in the end, take over (a part of) social life and therefore have it’s own economy, what would be the outcome of a complete government created en controlled online game?

             (A) Perhaps it is possible to measure up with some economic shortcomings when an online game is created where the citizens would pay taxes over. Incomings from this game would serve solely for the greater benefit, like normal taxes do.

Cultural Economy – 2: Symbolic Economies

(Q) John Allen states that, with regard to entangled knowledges, with the film industry, the technical and aesthetic co-exist. They would combine is ways which give the sector it’s distinctive blend of symbolic knowledges and that it is not possible nor desirable to draw a clear line between hard and soft knowledge. Now, I understand how these two completely different aspects of film would be combined in a certain way. I was wondering though how they could be seen in the same symbolic meanings, considering the difference in development of the two factors. Is it not necessary (also) to look at these two aspects separate form each other?

            (A) Thinking of the film industry I cannot help but look at several key aspects on their own. Isn’t it so that the end product is a result of the sum of its parts? And that is what makes an industry like this so interesting. Not every aspect develops as quick as the other. When we do start looking at the aesthetic and technical as two different types of symbolic forms, the outcome of their combination would be different as well.

Cultural Economy – 3:Capturing Markets from the Economists

 (Q) What can be said about the increasing output of products and upcoming new markets. If a market is a place with certain boundaries, how can they become smaller in content but larger in numbers? And how doe sit effect the audience?

            (A) I believe in the boundaries of markets becoming vaguer as time goes by. Given this fact, it would be possible that the public constructs its own markets and therefore boundaries. I did not really find anything about this point of view in the chapter and was wondering how this could become reality or perhaps already is.