Arthur De Vany

Arthur S. De Vany (born August 29, 1937) is an American economist who has studied the Hollywood film industry and developed theories of evolutionary fitness focusing on nutrition and exercise in the paleo (caveman) manner. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of California, Irvine.
De Vany earned his B.A. in economics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1963; his M.A. in economics from UCLA in 1965; and his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1970. He also trained at the Legal Institute for Economists at Emory University in 1982.
De Vany has researched motion picture economics, having created mathematical and statistical models of the dynamics of information to precisely describe the motion picture market in terms of kurtosis, skewness, wildness and uncertainty. His work has also covered other industries including water and energy.
His theses were collectively published in 2003 as Hollywood Economics: How Extreme Uncertainty Shapes the Film Industry. Using the motion picture industry's film budget and box office data provided by third-party information services such as Rentrak and Variety magazine, De Vany found that the historical relationship between a motion picture's cost and revenue converge to a group of stable distributions he describes as the Paretian distribution, i.e., the relationship between a motion picture's cost and revenue was wildly unpredictable compared to other investments.
In 1991, along with Ross Eckert, he published his Paramount Antitrust paper, an economic analysis of the landmark United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. decision, in which he found historical and economic reasons for the practices that were challenged by the Department of Justice, and in which most of his key ideas were expressed far before he confirmed them statistically.
In 1996, along with W. David Walls [d], he published the Bose-Einstein paper in the Economic Journal. Using the Bose–Einstein statistics concept used for quantum physics, he showed the complex convergence toward the Pareto distribution during the theatrical run and the way word-of-mouth drove a theatrical run's almost chaotic behavior. He was able to show that the film industry was able to adjust to such phenomena using adaptive, exhibition contracts and decentralizing decisions to be allocated to the local exhibitor through the hold-over and rental terms of the contract.
In an article co-authored with W. David Walls and published in Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, he also coined the phrase "superstar's curse" to describe the dilemma film producers face in hiring movie stars. Producers calculate the expected increase that a star will provide to a film's profit, then pay that star the difference. However, the returns of film are heavily skewed, such that the expected return (in statistical terms, the mean) is higher than the most common return (the mode). 80% of the time, the film will return less than the expected return. Thus, 80% of the time, the film will lose money.
De Vany has worked on the concept of evolutionary fitness (similar to the Paleolithic lifestyle). He outlines his approach in The New Evolution Diet: What Our Paleolithic Ancestors Can Teach Us about Weight Loss, Fitness, and Aging (December 2010). His ideas about fitness include a diet and fitness regime that promotes a more random behavior that mimics the natural way ancestral people lived in place of the steady and regular eating and sparse exercise that are the norm in Western societies. He follows a diet that mimics the diet of ancient humans during the Paleolithic period with carefully selected modern foods such as vegetables, lean meat and seafood, fresh fruits and nuts. He also advocates glucose restriction and intermittent fasting as methods to turn down the aging pathways.