Adrian H. McDonald (J.D. 2007, South Texas) has posted Down the Rabbit Hole: The Madness of State Film Incentives as a 'Solution' to Runaway Production on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This working paper is a "sequel" to my first law review article [Through the Looking Glass: Runaway Productions and "Hollywood Economics," 9 U. Pa. J. Bus. L. (2007)].
Since 2007, there has been a race to the bottom as virtually every state has enacted significant, if not detrimentally generous, tax incentives to lure film and television production. The efficacy of these incentives is evaluated at length, with particular attention paid to the origin and implementation of tax incentives in California, Massachusetts and Louisiana – states with colorful backgrounds on this issue. The paper suggests that the current "solution" to the runaway production problem (competing state incentives) is counter-productive to the point of becoming the problem and calls for the enactment of a single national tax incentive for the entire nation to better compete with foreign production locales like Canada.
Be warned, the paper is a very rough draft as of now. In the course of researching and drafting this new article, I created a website, to house links to news and information on the subject and to house a reports library, which should prove quite useful.



