Resolving the global efficiency versus local adaptability dilemma: US film multinationals in their largest foreign market in the 1930s and 1940s

Existing literature has identified a number of exogenous advantages that enabled US firms to dominate the global film industry. This article explores how these firms actually operated in their largest foreign market, and in doing so looks for evidence of endogenous advantages that may have enabled some US firms to outperform their rivals. It finds that firms which developed the most distinct local element to their production portfolios typically achieved a greater share of the British market. However, it does not find evidence that locally-based producers were any more effective at developing such locally-themed films than those based in Hollywood.