uncertainty in the movie industry does star power reduce terror of box o ce arthur de vany department economics institute for mathematical behavioral sciences university california irvine ca 92697 usa w david walls school and finance hong kong pokfulam road abstract everyone knows that business is risky but how it do strategies exist risk we investigate these ques tions using a sample over 2000 motion pictures discover movies are very indeed revenue dynamics le vy stable process asymptotically pareto distributed with inflnite variance mean dominated by rare blockbuster located far right tail there no typical be cause outcomes not converge to an average they diverge all scales stars them have higher this paper was presented at annual meeting american economic associa tion new york january 1999 received support from committee on research conference grants private
