Making movies and the derived demand for.......accountants!

I don’t usually watch the credits roll once the movie has finished but after watching Harry Potter with my wife we were discussing the intricacies of the plot for a few minutes (don’t laugh) when I noticed something surprising.

Labour is a derived demand because it depends on the demand for the good or service that it produces. I usually give a pretty boring example of the demand for teachers depending on the demand for places at a school. But now I will also use the demand for movie tickets and the demand for accountants! The graphic below shows that no fewer than 15 accountants were required as part of the film-making process!

I’m not sure if any of these accountants were “on location” but the vast amounts of money spent (and made) obviously needed looking after. One possible classroom exercise could be to split your class in to pairs / groups and give them five minutes to think of all of the jobs they are helping to support when they purchase a movie ticket. If your prize is an extrinsic reward eg lollies, then they will get the extra satisfaction of having helped to support another job. If it is intrinsic eg general applause and esteem from their peers, then that will have to be enough! Hopefully this will make derived demand not such a dry topic!