Keynes and the economics of the arts

Journal of Cultural Economics -     

Artistic education matters: survival in the arts occupations

The literature of cultural economics generally finds that an artistic education has no significant impact on artists’ income and careers in the arts. In artists’ labor markets, indefinable features such as talent and artistic creativity apparently contribute more to success or higher rates of payment than education and training. In this article, we will readdress this question by looking at the artists’ survival in the arts occupations. We find it reasonable to expect than an artistic education can have a significant impact on artists’ careers because of the importance of technical skills, networks and signaling effects. We analyze the question by using a unique longitudinal dataset for five different groups of artists in Denmark, using the Cox model to apply survival functions and semi-parametric analysis. The results show, among other things, that an artistic education has a significant impact on artists’ careers in the arts, and we find important industry differences.     

Contextual Negotiation of Cultural Identifications and Relationships: Interview Discourse with Palestinian,Israeli, and Palestinian/Israeli Young Women in a U.S. Peace-Building Program

Abstract

An integration of critical and interpretive perspectives frames the analysis of interview discourse from participants in a U.S. peace-building dialogue program during 1997–1998. Israeli, Palestinian, and Palestinian/Israeli identified participants’ discourse reveals that they negotiate multiple and contextually contingent cultural identifications, and that the context both enables and constrains their relationships with each other. Discursive themes demonstrate the complexity and struggle in which participants position themselves and exercise levels of agency, and negotiate their cultural and intercultural relationships. The findings of the study substantiate calls by scholars and practitioners to incorporate contextual factors such as history, politics, social hierarchies, and agency into research and training models of intergroup dialogue.     

Direct versus indirect aid to the arts: A Canadian perspective

Conclusions The bulk of contemporary policy concern in the cultural area is focussed on the nature of government assistance. In particular, there is a growing feeling that indirect assistance to cultural industries should be promoted to a greater extent than it has been in the past. This feeling reflects both the view that real levels of direct government grants may not be sustainable and the presumption that indirect forms of assistance (such as tax concessions and the like) can channel aid to artists more efficiently than direct forms of assistance, such as Canada Council grants to arts organizations. The various arguments offered in favor of one or another approach towards funding cultural activities are certainly not conclusive. The main point to be made in this regard, however, is that debate over how culture should be funded is taking place in the absence of explicitly formulated operational objectives as well as crucial information about how the cultural production and marketing processes operate. In this regard, ineffectual policy-making across the broad spectrum of cultural assistance programs may be of far greater concern than any efficiency differences which might be anticipated between various forms of assistance to the arts.     

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

Journal of Cultural Economics -