|
on Cultural Economics |
|
Issue of 2016‒05‒14
five papers chosen by Roberto Zanola Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Victor Ginsburgh |
| Abstract: | In this chapter, I show that evaluating wine is very close to evaluating art, but that the gradings or rankings that follow often result in bullshit, within the meaning given to it by philosopher Harry Frankfurt (2005). |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/229780&r=cul |
| By: | Axel Cleeremans; Victor Ginsburgh; Olivier Klein; Abdul Ghafar Noury |
| Abstract: | Both economists and art historians suggest that the name of the artist is important and belongs with the work. We carried out an experiment to explore the influence that the presence and knowledge of an artist’s name exert on aesthetic judgments. Forty participants (20 students majoring in psychology and 20 in art history) were asked to rank twelve works painted by different artists, some of which bore the name of their actual creators, others not. The results demonstrated that the presence of artists’ names led to higher rankings among psychology majors, but only if they had been attending to the presented names. In contrast, in the case of art students, it was knowledge of the artists that predicted judgments. The results suggest that for people untrained in the visual arts, the presence of a name can function as heuristic cue to denote value.Keywords: Name of artist, context, perception, experimental aesthetics. |
| Keywords: | name of artist; context; perception; experimental aesthetics |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/229783&r=cul |
| By: | Enikolopov, Ruben; Petrova, Maria; Sonin, Konstantin |
| Abstract: | There is ample evidence that in democratic countries traditional mass media affect people’s behavior and foster political and corporate accountability. Do new media such as blogs play a similar role in non-democratic countries, where offline media are often suppressed? We study consequences of blog posts about corruption in Russian state-controlled companies. We show that anti-corruption blog posts by Aleksei Navalny, a popular Russian civic activist, had a negative causal impact on market returns of state-controlled companies. For identification, we exploit the analysis of the precise timing of blog posts combined with quasi-random variation in access to blog platform caused by hacker attacks. The effect becomes less pronounced and even positive for the posts that attract the most attention, consistent with disciplining effect of social media. Furthermore, the posts have a long-term impact on returns and are associated with higher management turnover and less minority shareholder conflicts. Taken together, our results suggest that social media can discipline corruption even in a country with limited political competition and heavily censored mass media. |
| Keywords: | financial markets; governance; political economy; social media |
| JEL: | L82 L86 P16 |
| Date: | 2016–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:11263&r=cul |
| By: | Christiane Bradler (ZEW Centre for European Economic Research, Mannheim, Germany); Susanne Neckermann (Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and ZEW Centre for European Economic Research, Mannheim, Germany); Arne Warnke (ZEW Centre for European Economic Research, Mannheim, Germany) |
| Abstract: | This paper reports the results from a large-scale laboratory experiment investigating the impact of tournament incentives and wage gifts on creativity. We find that tournaments substantially increase creative output, with no evidence for crowding out of intrinsic motivation. By comparison, wage gifts are ineffective. Additional treatments show that it is the uncertain mapping between effort and output that inhibits reciprocity. This uncertainty is prevalent in creative and other complex tasks. Our findings provide a rationale for the frequent use of tournaments when seeking to motivate creative output. |
| Keywords: | creativity; incentives; tournament; reciprocity; experiment; crowding-out |
| JEL: | C91 D03 J33 M52 |
| Date: | 2016–05–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20160035&r=cul |
| By: | Nancy Holman; Gabriel M. Ahlfeldt |
| Abstract: | Conservation areas (CAs) represent a particularly restrictive type of English planning policy that seeks to ex-ante pin down some notion of what value is and how it should be practiced. Designation implies a significant limitation of owners’ control over the shape and appearance of their property and could be argued to run counter to the current push towards a growth dependent paradigm of planning. The policy, however, also may be viewed as a solution to a coordination problem that exists whereby it is collectively rationale to preserve the character of an area, but individually owners may be tempted to inappropriately alter their property, thus free-riding on nearby properties’ character. In this paper, applying a quantitative analysis of about 8000 CAs and close to 1 million property transactions in England and a qualitative analysis of nine CAs in Greater London, we illustrate that not only does regulation create a framework, which helps to overcome coordination problems in CAs, but that residents held and practiced wider more nuanced views of value(s) that allowed for exchange and value creation all the while permitting more multiple and complex economic practices to exist. |
| Keywords: | designation; social relation of value; heritage; property value; prisoner’s dilemma. |
| JEL: | C78 D23 R52 |
| Date: | 2015–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:57599&r=cul |