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on Cultural Economics |
| By: | Michael R. Ward (Department of Economics, University of Texas at Arlington) |
| Abstract: | US education policy encourages the use of computers and the Internet at both the college and high school levels. As a consequence, students have had better access to technologies to illicitly share copyrighted music, causing a decline in sales from the traditional music store retail channel. Using a panel of counties over the 1994-2004 period, I find evidence that the number of music stores fell when high schools received subsidies for Internet connections and it fell faster where college enrollment was higher. This intervention in education policy could have contributed greatly to the decline in the music industry. |
| Keywords: | Music, Internet, Education, Illicit Behavior |
| JEL: | L82 O34 H3 |
| Date: | 2007–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:txa:wpaper:0701&r=cul |
| By: | Ashworth, G.J.; Tunbridge, J.E. (Groningen University) |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:rugurs:304&r=cul |
| By: | Thijs Vandemoortele; Nathalie Francken; Johan F.M. Swinnen |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of the media on the allocation of humanitarian aid. We analyze the emergency assistance provided by four Belgian aid organizations to disasters that occurred from 2002 until 2004 and the media coverage of these disasters by two Belgian newspapers. We find a correlation between mass media coverage and emergency assistance. However, when correcting for an endogeneity bias, we find no longer a significant impact of the media on the aid allocation process of these organizations, which suggests that the media follow rather than lead the decision to allocate aid. This result is found to be robust irrespective of the selected newspaper, different measures of media coverage and disaster severity. |
| Keywords: | Media, Humanitarian Aid, CNN effect, Belgium |
| JEL: | D73 F35 H59 L31 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lic:licosd:19007&r=cul |
| By: | Raymond Fisman; Shang-Jin Wei |
| Abstract: | We empirically analyze the illicit trade in cultural property and antiques, taking advantage of different reporting incentives between source and destination countries. We thus generate a measure of illicit trafficking in these goods based on the difference between imports recorded in United States' customs data and the (purportedly identical) trade as recorded by customs authorities in exporting countries. We find that this reporting gap is highly correlated with the corruption level of the exporting country as measured by commonly used survey-based indicies, and that this correlation is stronger for artifact-rich countries. As a placebo test, we do not observe any such pattern for U.S. imports of toys from these same exporters. We report similar results for four other Western country markets. Our analysis provides a useful framework for studying trade in illicit goods. Further, our results provide empirical confirmation that survey-based corruption indicies are informative, as they are correlated with an objective measure of illicit activity. |
| JEL: | F1 K42 O1 Z11 |
| Date: | 2007–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13446&r=cul |