Moral rights protection for the visual arts

Beginning in 1979, certain states extended extra copyright protection, known as “moral rights” protection, to visual artists. Moral rights protection, which was incorporated into U.S. copyright law in 1990, ensures that works cannot be altered in a manner that would negatively impact the reputation of the artist. Using difference-in-differences regression strategies, we compare artists and non-artists in states with moral rights laws to those in states without these laws, before and after the laws are enacted. This enables us to test the impact of the laws on the behavior of artists, consumers, and policy makers. Our analysis reveals that the average artist’s income falls by around $4000 per year as a result of moral rights legislation, but we find no impact of the laws on artists’ choices of residence or on state-level public spending on the arts.     

Keynes and the economics of the arts

Journal of Cultural Economics -     

Unsettled questions in the political economy of the arts

Reprinted fromThe Three Banks Review September 1971 pp. 3–19, by kind permission of the Royal Bank of Scotland plc. Lionel (Lord) Robbins (1898–1984) was Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics from 1929–1961 and Emeritus Professor unit 1980. He was actively involved in the arts, higher education and journalism, holding a number of prestigious posts.