nep-cul New Economics Papers
on Cultural Economics
Issue of 2010‒05‒22
five papers chosen by
Roberto Zanola
University of the Piemonte Orientale

  1. The Impact of the 2007 European Cultural Capital in Sibiu: A long term perspective By Richards, Greg; Rotariu, Ilie
  2. Ideology and cultural policy By Niklas Potrafke
  3. Competitive balance and TV audience: An empirical analysis on the Italian Serie A By Di Domizio Marco
  4. Expert opinion and cuisine reputation in the market for restaurant meals By Fogarty, James Joseph
  5. Religious Organizations By Gilat Levy; Ronny Razin

  1. By: Richards, Greg; Rotariu, Ilie
    Abstract: This study of the impact of the European Cultural Capital in Sibiu in 2007 is part of an ongoing programme of research initiated by the European Association for Tourism and Leisure Education (ATLAS) in 1999. This programme of research aims to examine the implementation and effects of this increasingly popular event throughout Europe. The European Capital of Culture staged in Sibiu during 2007 was a unique event. It was the first European Capital of Culture (ECOC) to be staged in one of the post-2004 EU accession countries, and it represented a major challenge in being staged just as Romania was joining the EU. The original evaluation report published in 2007 by ATLAS (Richards and Rotariu, 2007), indicated that the event programme had successfully met many of the short-term aims, attracting large numbers of visitors, increasing cultural participation and improving the image of the city in Romania and abroad. Measuring the other, often less tangible impacts of the event requires a longer-term monitoring strategy. ATLAS has therefore undertaken a continuous monitoring programme for the City of Sibiu over the past three years. This research includes a number of different elements:regular surveys of residents and visitors, analysis of tourism flows and other statistics, Interviews with stakeholders in the city, Data from the regular surveys carried out by ATLAS in other parts of Europe. This report provides a summary of some of the major findings of the research to date, mainly based on the resident and visitor surveys.
    Keywords: European Cutural Capital; cultural tourism;
    JEL: Z10
    Date: 2010–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:22532&r=cul
  2. By: Niklas Potrafke
    Abstract: By examining voting behavior in a referendum on the construction of a concert hall in Germany, I show that political ideology influences cultural policy. The results suggest that resistance to the concert hall was particularly strong in electoral districts in which majorities of citizens vote for the social democrats. By contrast, constituents of rightwing parties voted more in favor of the project. This voting pattern indicates that cultural policy is ideologyinduced. The direct-democratic vote against the concert hall is not in line with the voting behavior of the representatives in the city council. My findings thus show that the voting behavior of political representatives may be decoupled from the preferences of their constituents even in closely knit jurisdictions in which the principal-agent relationship between voters and representatives is usually thought to favor the principals. Moreover, this decoupling has been documented for a policy issue that does not require substantial information or specialized knowledge to be evaluated but rather voters' decisions are based on ideological convictions.
    Keywords: cultural policy, ideology, partisan politics, referendum, direct democracy
    Date: 2010
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:twi:respas:0049&r=cul
  3. By: Di Domizio Marco
    Abstract: This paper investigates the behaviour of the “couch potato” audience in regards to the Italian Football League - Serie A - during the 2008/09 season. Using data from 380 matches, we considered a collection of variables suitable to influence the share of TV audience of satellite television. According to the standard prescriptions of sports economics literature and assessing peculiarities of Italian context, we estimated the “Football on TV’s” demand by an OLS regression model. Rating the dependent variable of TV audience by the share registered in each match, we introduced a set of independent variables in order to approximate match quality, the programme schedule placement, the follow-up of the involved teams and their rank. As other theoretical and empirical investigations have focused on Spanish and English championships, our attention concentrates particularly on the relationship between the closeness of the game and the television audience. In the regression model, uncertainty of outcome has been measured extracting information from the Italian fixed odds betting market. We found that all the theoretical expected relationships have been confirmed by the econometric analysis. In spite of the statistical significance of the outcome uncertainty on share, the estimation points out that more then 90% of variability concerning TV audience has been explained net of uncertainty factors and that the impact of a closest context on dependent variable is marginal. The overestimation of the role of match uncertainty on TV audience could support the opinion of top team’s management opposing the return to the collective bargaining of TV rights starting from next season, 2010/11, fixed by the law 9/2008 of Italian Parliament. In football context the competitive balance should then be considered a “meritorius good”, far from market assessment.
    Date: 2010–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ter:wpaper:0064&r=cul
  4. By: Fogarty, James Joseph
    Abstract: As food is an experience good, the market for restaurant meals is a market where the cost of acquiring information regarding quality is relatively high. In such markets consumers often turn to reputation measures to guide purchase decisions. As Australia does not have a longstanding cuisine style of its own, and given Australia has been open to substantial immigration inflows since federation, it represents an especially appropriate market to study regarding the impact of individual restaurant reputation and collective cuisine reputation on meal prices. The following study uses the hedonic price approach to investigate the implicit price of individual reputation indicators, cuisine type reputation indicators, and other objective indicators in the market for restaurant meals. The empirical findings presented suggest that both individual restaurant reputation and cuisine type reputation are important. Other important factors are shown to include the quality of the restaurant wine list, the availability of private dining rooms, and whether or not there is an outdoor dining option.
    Keywords: Expert Opinion, Food, Hedonic Pricing, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, D12, Q18, Z10,
    Date: 2010
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aare10:59078&r=cul
  5. By: Gilat Levy (LSE); Ronny Razin (LSE)
    Abstract: We propose a model of religious organizations which relies on the ability of such organi-zations and personal utility shocks. We show how religious organizations arise endogenously and characterize their features. Specifically, we find that members of the religious organization share similar beliefs and are more likely to cooperate with one another in social interactions. We identify a "spiritual" as well as a "material" payoff for members of the religious organization. Our results explain and shed light on empirical phenomena such as the effects of secularization and economic development on religious beliefs and participation, the relation between the size of the religion and the intensity of its members’ beliefs, religious segregation and religious conflicts.
    Keywords: Economics of Religion, Religion, Organizations, Beliefs
    JEL: L30 D71
    Date: 2010–05
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2010.53&r=cul

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