Are There Too Many Revivals on Broadway? A Stochastic Dominance Approach

According to many theater critics not only does Broadway produce too many revivals but there is an increasing tendency to produce revivals in preference to original shows. Nonparametric techniques are used to test for a trend in the proportion of new shows accounted for by revivals. These tests indicate that the proportion of revivals is indeed increasing over time. Using nonparametric techniques again to test for stochastic dominance it is difficult to argue that Broadway produces too many revivals. Although original productions on average run for longer, revivals are much less likely to close after only a small number of performances. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. 2005