On justifying subsidies to the performing arts

Reprinted from Hendon, W.S., Shanahan, J.L. and MacDonald, A.J., eds. (1980)Economic Policy For the Arts. Abt Books, Cambridge, Mass. with kind permission of the publisher. David Austen-Smith, born 1953, wrote his Ph.D. thesis on cultural economics at the University of Cambridge, U.K.; he worked at the University of York and wrote several articles in the field before moving to the Department of Political Science at the University of Rochester in the U.S. His research is now primarily in positive political theory.     

Politico-economic interactions of German public performing arts institutions

Our paper analyzes the conduct of German public performing arts institutions in terms of non-market decision making or public choice. Apart from consumers of performing arts managers of performing arts institutions and public donors are main agents. A manager of a performing arts institution will not assume that the number of visitors is independent of his institution's programme or the ticket prices. By the same reasoning he will regard the amount of public subsidies not as exogenous, but dependent on his own policy. If future grants depend on present and past success (however defined), this will feed back into managerial decisions, along with expectations about demand. Data for the Federal Republic of Germany serve to empirically support the theoretical argument.     

The “manifest destiny” of the performing arts

Journal of Cultural Economics -     

Evidence of the existence of the cost disease in the performing arts

This paper examines the experience of 25 large U.S. orchestras over a 21-year period for the presence or absence of the cost disease. Appropriate measures of input and output are discussed. Measures of productivity, compensation per worker, and unit labor costs are calculated and compared to similar measures for the manufacturing sector. The history of ticket prices and attendance is reviewed, and price and income elasticities of demand are estimated. The relationship between all these variables is explored, and some policy recommendations are offered.The author is grateful to Professor William Baumol and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. She also wishes to thank Heather Dinwiddie and Dan Patterson of the American Symphony Orchestra League for making the orchestra data available. Support for this project was provided by a grant-in-aid of research from Indiana University Southeast.     

The “manifest destiny” of the performing arts by A. Peacock

Journal of Cultural Economics -     

Children of performing arts,the economic dilemma: The climbing costs of health care and education

Journal of Cultural Economics -