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We examine the out-of-market gap – the time between the end of a film’s theatrical run and its release on DVD – for a sample of U.S. films during 1988-2005. The average gap declined from 58.14 days in 1998 to 27.93 days in 2005; by 2005, 39% of the films were released on DVD prior to leaving the theaters. Probit and hazard models are estimated to explore the factors that influence a distributor’s decision to release a film on DVD before it exits the theaters, and the timing of the release for films that appear on DVD after they leave the theaters.

We present a comparison of two voting models to forecast election into The National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Baseball Writers Association of America. Although both voting models provide similar predictions on which eligible players should be elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame, we believe that the voting model that uses individual performance variables rather than a single performance index is marginally better because it allows the data to determine the relative importance of the individual performance variables included in the single performance index. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.