The drowned and the saved: the determinants of success in the Italian temporary art and cultural exhibitions market

This paper develops an empirical analysis of the determinants of the length of temporary art and cultural exhibitions. Using a sample of 659 exhibitions that took place in Italy in the period 2001–2010, a generalized linear model with a logit link and the binomial family was estimated. We also focus on the subsample of prolonged exhibitions, using a logistic accelerated failure time model. The empirical evidence supports the relevance of the subject, location and timing of the exhibition on duration; however, differences in the estimated impact of explanatory variables seem to suggest alternative marketing strategies for prolonged exhibitions.     

Designing a business model for financial products for cultural heritage in the Korean market

There are many contingent valuation (CV) studies to estimate the economic benefits of cultural heritage, but few provided advice on the design of financial products for cultural heritage assets. This paper conducted conjoint and willingness-to-pay (WTP) analyses for providing the design implication of these financial products. We calculated WTP for each attribute. The result of conjoint analysis shows that people prefer a short period of investment, high-expected rate of return and small amount of money invested. Only the amount invested and the rate of return on investment are significant to estimate WTP for these financial products.     

Cultural goods creation, cultural capital formation, provision of cultural services and cultural atmosphere accumulation

The cultural atmosphere in a society is accumulated over time through the consumption of cultural services and is diminished through depreciation. Using cultural capital (e.g., cultural heritage, paintings, music scores), cultural services are provided by the cultural-services industry (e.g., museums, opera houses); cultural capital is enlarged by new cultural goods created by individuals. Individuals’ utilities are positively affected by the cultural services they consume, by the cultural goods they create and by the cultural atmosphere and the cultural capital accumulated in society. In a laissez-faire economy, individuals tend to ignore the positive external effects of their cultural-services consumption and creation of cultural goods on other individuals via accumulating cultural atmosphere and cultural capital. Consequently, suboptimally little cultural atmosphere and cultural capital will be accumulated. The efficient intertemporal allocation can be restored by introducing an appropriate subsidy that not only stimulates consumers’ demand for cultural services and the creation of new cultural goods but also enhances the accumulation of cultural atmosphere and cultural capital.

Cross-border circulation of films and cultural diversity in the EU

This paper explores new data sources on multilateral trade in films among EU countries and with the USA in offline cinema and in online video-on-demand distribution. We observe variations in trade patterns across countries and films and explore how they affect cultural diversity. We find that the EU film market is highly fragmented and cross-border film availability in cinema is low. We explore different aspects of the cultural discount hypothesis by means of a standard Helpman and Krugman (Market structure and foreign trade. Increasing returns, imperfect competition, and the international economy, MIT Press, Cambridge, 1985) trade model with economies of scale and a two-stage Heckman (Econometrica 47(1):153–161, 1979) estimation procedure. Our results show that cultural distance, success in the home market and the size of the film budget influence trade of films between countries. US films have a lower propensity to get into export markets, relative to their success in the home market. Consumer demand for imported films is relatively smaller in large EU economies, except for films imported from the USA that are only marginally affected. We also show that trade patterns in online film distribution are not fundamentally different. As online distribution occurs downstream from theatrical release, online distributors can benefit from cinema market experience to make a better selection of films. This results in a lower impact of domestic market shares on online trade patterns.     

Innovation and diversity in the digital cultural and creative industries

Journal of Cultural Economics - The cultural and creative industries (CCIs) are increasingly being recognised in South Africa, as in other countries, as wealth-creating, given appropriate...     

Municipal elections and cultural expenditure

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of electoral timing on municipal public cultural spending. We use a panel sample of all municipalities from the Spanish Region of Murcia for 1995–2008. Our results reveal that mayors adopt an opportunistic behavior, increasing cultural spending in the election year and reducing it in the second year after the election. We also investigate whether the electoral cycle in cultural spending is influenced by mayors’ ideology, political strength, willingness to run for re-election, and electoral competitiveness. In this regard, our study shows that when mayors expect close elections, political budget cycles’ size is greater. Concerning political leadership, the magnitude of the electoral cycle is influenced by mayors’ political ideology rather than mayors’ political strength and re-election willingness. Additionally, we seek to shed some light on the determinants of public cultural spending. We find that income and upper-level governments’ transfers have a positive impact on cultural spending. Finally, unemployment, young people’s proportion and elderly people’s proportion negatively influence cultural spending.     

The cultural entrepreneur and the creative industries: beginning in Vienna

In this paper on the creative industries and cultural entrepreneurship I take my point of departure in Richard Caves’ Creative Industries [Caves, R. (2000). Creative industries: Contacts between art and commerce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.]. While Caves draws heavily on economic analysis and contemporary sociology in his excellent analysis of these two topics, he does not use the sociological classics at all. The main purpose of the paper is an attempt to remedy this, by drawing attention to the possible contribution that the works of Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Georg Simmel can make to our understanding of the creative industries and cultural entrepreneurship. Since this paper was prepared as a keynote address for the 2006 conference of the Association for Cultural Economics International in Vienna, I also discuss Schumpeter’s ideas on art and entrepreneurship, ideas which grew out of Viennese culture.

Understanding Hollywood's organization and continuing success

Integrated international marketing of films and related merchandise and close financial ties between distributors and roducers have evolved to cope with the risks of piracy, cost containment, opportunism, and revenue uncertainty. Our reading of the evidence is that this system has dominated because of its efficiency. In search of an explanation of why America remains the centre of this institutional and contractual web, we examine the impact of two world wars, the rapid commercialization of new technologies in the United States by aggressive managers, an open financial system and the ethnic diversity, language homogeneity, and size of the domestic market.We are grateful to Elizabet Filleul, Simon Grant, Peter Harcourt, Ian Jarvie and Janet Staiger for their comments but absolve them of any responsibility for the views presented.     

Rational addiction and cultural goods: the case of the Italian theatregoer

This paper tests whether demand for theatre in Italy is consistent with the model of rational addiction presented in Becker and Murphy (J Polit Econ 96(4):675–700, 1988). Data from a novel 34-year panel on regional annual theatre attendance are used to estimate market demand. Four models are applied to investigate the demand function, and all of these also include per capita income and other control variables as regressors. The first two models are estimated to check whether theatregoers are myopically addicted to theatre. The results suggest that the theatre is an addictive good because past consumption (and prices) significantly raises the marginal utility of current consumption. The third model tests the rational addiction hypothesis, which assumes that future attendance also influences current attendance, whilst past and future prices influence current attendance only indirectly through their impact on past and future attendances. However, our most highly specified model, introducing past and future prices, demonstrates that Italian theatregoers are not myopic but fully rational as outlined in Becker and Murphy (1988). The results demonstrate that the rational addiction hypothesis is applicable not only to “harmful” addictions such as alcohol, cigarettes and drug consumption, but also to “beneficial” addictions, such as theatre attendance. This result has important policy implications because theatre is one of the most subsidised performing arts in Italy; if theatregoers are fully rational, policy makers can influence theatre attendance using alternative policy instruments (price and income), thereby reducing government expenditure on theatre subsidies.     

Economics of cultural tourism: issues and perspectives

The special issue aims at exploring, with an economic perspective, the interconnections between cultural participation, in all its expressions, and tourism organization and patterns with the purpose of understanding economic effects, emerging trends and policy implications. The expanding notion of the cultural consumption of tourists makes the definition of cultural tourism increasingly elusive. Empirical investigations of the relationships between cultural participation and cultural heritage and tourism offer interesting hints in many directions. This introduction briefly overviews the premise of this special issue, the literature and the several perspectives taken by the included articles. Aside from their cultural topics—general, intangible or temporary—these essays all tackle some important economic dimensions of tourism. We encourage cultural economists to invest more in these fascinating areas as more than just intellectual tourists.     

夜色朦胧中的美丽女人?——基于当下中国与英国文化创意产业现状的对话

中国人民大学文化创意产业研究所所长金元浦先生和英国创意多德创意机构主席菲利普·多德(PhilipDodd)先生从国家政策、产业历史、教育、人口等诸多方面就中国与英国文化创意产业的现状及发展趋势展开了富有启发意义的对话,辑录于此,以飨读者。     

国际发型时常：整合与差异

2014年7月4日,“2014年ICD中国·杭州发型汇演”在杭州乐园举行。作为正在杭州举办的“ICD中国发型时尚周”的压轴大戏,这台发型汇演由来自意大利、德国、奥地利、日本等国的ICD（世界发型设计家协会）认证设计师和国内各地的优秀发型设计师同台献艺,展示了当今国际发型设计的潮流趋势和东西方发型艺术的融合与差异。     

Music in the air: estimating the social return to cultural amenities

If being around smart people makes us smarter and more productive, what can regions do to attract smart people? This paper considers endogenous cultural amenities as a location factor for high-skilled workers. To overcome selection in the provision of cultural amenities, we exploit variation in contemporaneous cultural amenities that is explained by the path-dependence of historical agglomerations of the cultural activities. To assess spillovers from high-skilled workers attracted by cultural amenities, we use a 1% sample drawn from the population of all West German workers under social security during the period 1975–2010. This panel of individual observations allows us to compare wages of similar individuals who work in locations with different levels of high-skilled workers who are attracted by cultural amenities. To account for non-random selection of workers among cities, we use individual-location fixed effects. Our results show that cultural amenities are an important factor in the location decision of high-skilled workers. The positive effect of the local share of high-skilled workers on unskilled, skilled and high-skilled wages indicates strong and productive spillovers.     

Specificities of the artistic cultural labor market in Brazilian metropolitan regions between 2002 and 2010

This paper analyzes the singularity of artistic cultural sector workers in the Brazilian metropolitan labor market, considering the job satisfaction of artists that Throsby proposes in his work preference model of artist behavior (1994). We also examine the effect of public expenditures on the income of workers in the cultural sector. Using 2002 to 2010 data from the Monthly Employment Survey (PME) and administrative records from Finance of Brazil (FINBRA), we estimate a probit model and a wage equation. In our model, we estimate wages as a function of: (1) sociodemographic characteristics of workers, (2) a variable for informal jobs, (3) the number of working hours, (4) a variable for the worker having another job, (5) per capita expenditures on culture interacted with a dummy for artistic cultural workers, (6) interactive binary variables involving place of residence and artistic cultural workers and (7) the predicted probability obtained by the probit model. This probability is estimated based on the likelihood of working in a creative activity, considering both workers from the cultural sector and other workers, controlled by: (1) sociodemographic characteristics of workers, (2) characteristics of their jobs, (3) dummies for the metropolitan regions and (4) willingness of creative workers to work additional hours interacted with the number of hours worked. Our results show that workers in the cultural sector are likely to work longer hours when compared to workers in other sectors. For our wage equation, the results suggest that women earn relatively less than men and blacks earn less than whites. Furthermore, earnings increase with age and the level of education. Formal workers obtain higher earnings when compared to informal ones. Finally, an increase in the per capita public expenditure on the cultural sector raises the income of workers in artistic cultural occupations.