Economic impact of film and video production

Types of economic multipliers;
Multiplier values: National multipliers; State multipliers

Overview

A multiplier is a number that indicates the ultimate effect or ‘impact’ on an economic variable (e.g. economic activity, measured as income or employment) that can be expected from an initial change in a related variable (e.g. the investment associated with a film project).

Multipliers reflect the underlying economic reality that increases in demand or spending cause ‘flow-on’ or ‘ripple’ effects. For example, a film shoot at a particular location will increase the incomes of accommodation providers, shopkeepers, suppliers of raw materials for sets, and so on. This will in turn increase the demand or level of spending for their suppliers of goods and services. This flow-on can, in theory, continue indefinitely, but over time each ripple becomes increasingly smaller.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics releases ‘input-output multipliers’ for 106 industry sectors, with the latest tables being for 1998/99, but does not produce multipliers for the cultural sector. The Statistics Working Group (SWG) attempted to fill this gap and generated multipliers based on 1996/97 input-output tables. Multipliers based on more recent data are not available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) or the SWG due to resource and data constraints.