Mall Flicks - The Mall Boom in Turkey with an Unexpected Byproduct: The Movie Sector Expansion

Abstract

Turkey has been experiencing a mall boom since the end of the 1990s. This boom’s impacts are obvious on the construction, real estate and shopping sectors. However, surprisingly, this boom encouraged significant enlargement of the movie sector as well. This enlargement affects the cultural life of people, in addition to creating urbanization economies. In this paper, for the first time in the literature, effects of shopping mall expansion on the movie sector are studied. We construct a theoretical model and support our theoretical findings empirically, by employing a dynamic panel data estimation method and utilizing a unique dataset from Turkey. We show that without the mall boom, the recent fast expansion in the movie sector in Turkey would not be possible. Our findings may apply to similar metropolitan development booms in other emerging markets.