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on Cultural Economics |
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Issue of 2019‒02‒25
seven papers chosen by Roberto Zanola Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Andrej Srakar (Institute for Economic Research, Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia); Marilena Vecco (Burgundy School of Business – Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté) |
| Abstract: | Despite the topic of nascent entrepreneurship receiving quite extent in coverage in the scientific literature there is very few, if any, knowledge on the characteristics of nascent firms in the cultural and creative sector. In this article we use Amadeus database for a sample of firms from 28 European Union countries in the period 2007-2016, to study the effects of cultural policy on nascent entrepreneurship. We model the effects as a mediation problem and show that while cultural policy has an effect on general performance of cultural firms it is mediated through its indirect effect on nascent cultural and creative firms and mediation happens with time delay. This finding is robust to numerous cultural policy variables, definitions of nascent entrepreneurship, performance indicators and model specifications. The article also implements and discusses a Bayesian nonparametric (BNP) approach to longitudinal mediation analysis (using Bayesian additive regression trees used on cross-lagged panel modelling of the Baron-Kenny approach to mediation) which is to our knowledge the first application of BNP in longitudinal mediation in statistical and econometric literature. We conclude by policy and research recommendations and reflections. |
| Keywords: | Nascent cultural entrepreneurship, cultural policy, longitudinal mediation, Baron-Kenny approach, BART, Amadeus |
| Date: | 2019–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cue:wpaper:awp-01-2019&r=all |
| By: | Michalopoulos, Stelios; Xue, Melanie Meng |
| Abstract: | Folklore is the collection of traditional beliefs, customs, and stories of a community, passed through the generations by word of mouth. This vast expressive body, studied by the corresponding discipline of folklore, has evaded the attention of economists. In this study we do four things that reveal the tremendous potential of this corpus for understanding comparative development and culture. First, we introduce and describe a unique catalogue of folklore that codes the presence of thousands of motifs for roughly 1,000 pre-industrial societies. Second, we use a dictionary-based approach to elicit group-specific measures of various traits related to the natural environment, institutional framework, and mode of subsistence. We establish that these proxies are in accordance with the ethnographic record, and illustrate how to use a group's oral tradition to quantify non-extant characteristics of preindustrial societies. Third, we use folklore to uncover the historical cultural values of a group. Doing so allows us to test various influential conjectures among social scientists including the original affluent society, the culture of honor among pastoralists, the role of family in extended kinship systems and the intensity of trade and rule-following norms in politically centralized group. Finally, we explore how cultural norms inferred via text analysis of oral traditions predict contemporary attitudes and beliefs. |
| Keywords: | Culture; Development; Folklore; History; Values |
| JEL: | O10 Z1 Z10 Z13 |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13425&r=all |
| By: | Andrej Srakar (Institute for Economic Research, Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia); Miroslav Verbic (Institute for Economic Research, Faculty of Economics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia) |
| Abstract: | Network organizations in the arts have recently received substantial discussion in cultural policy research. Yet, very seldom have they been empirically modelled. We analyze development of Društvo Asociacija, the cover network of non-governmental organizations and freelancers in culture and the arts in Slovenia in years 2004-2017. Using mediation analysis for time series, using generalized linear models and Granger mediation analysis, we observe three breakpoint periods in the development of the network and explore if they were the effects of internal, organizationally related factors or the mere response to external, macroeconomic changes. Our findings point to the importance of internal decisions of the organization which do not have a mediating effect to the consequences of external factors like financial crises. This shows that decisions of network organizations in the arts are not merely a reflection of changes in their environment. |
| Keywords: | network organizations, arts and culture, mediation analysis, time series, external and internal factors |
| JEL: | Z11 |
| Date: | 2018–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cue:wpaper:awp-05-2018&r=all |
| By: | Pirvu (Mazilescu), Ionica-Diana; Lazar (Soare), Gabriela |
| Abstract: | Important in terms of culture is how to manage because it can bring many benefits, from spiritual to material. In cultural institutions, human resources are trained in the creative process. In this context, we can speak of a creative person. Depending on the type of cultural institution, creative staff play a more important or almost exclusive role. The creative process is the one that first defines the cultural institution. |
| Keywords: | artists; creativity; creative process; |
| JEL: | Z1 |
| Date: | 2018–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:92152&r=all |
| By: | Michela Giorcelli; Nicola Lacetera; Astrid Marinoni |
| Abstract: | We study the interplay between scientific progress and culture through text analysis on a corpus of about eight million books, with the use of techniques and algorithms from machine learning. We focus on a specific scientific breakthrough, the theory of evolution through natural selection by Charles Darwin, and examine the diffusion of certain key concepts that characterized this theory in the broader cultural discourse and social imaginary. We find that some concepts in Darwin’s theory, such as Evolution, Survival, Natural Selection and Competition diffused in the cultural discourse immediately after the publication of On the Origins of Species. Other concepts such as Selection and Adaptation were already present in the cultural dialogue. Moreover, we document semantic changes for most of these concepts over time. Our findings thus show a complex relation between two key factors of long-term economic growth – science and culture. Considering the evolution of these two factors jointly can offer new insights to the study of the determinants of economic development, and machine learning is a promising tool to explore these relationships. |
| Keywords: | science, culture, economic history, text analysis, machine learning |
| JEL: | C19 C89 N00 O00 O39 Z19 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7499&r=all |
| By: | Benner, Maximilian |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses the nexus between economically-driven tourism development and broader societal aspects of social, cultural and ecological sustainability. The paper argues that similar to the discussion on the limits to growth in industrial development that started in the 1970s, the currently debated phenomenon of overtourism calls for a parallel discussion in tourism development. Similar to the argument that industrial development needs to be driven by qualitative, not quantitative growth, tourism development has to reorient itself away from the goal of ever-increasing tourist arrivals towards broader objectives of socially, culturally and ecologically sustainable qualitative growth. This argument leads to two policy implications. First, policymakers should consider which forms of tourism to encourage and which ones to discourage. Second, tourism policy should set incentives and disincentives accordingly. Institutional approaches from human geography can serve to analyze the prospects of these incentives and disincentives, and insights from behavioral economics such as the nudging approach can serve to shape policies accordingly. The paper takes the cases of two cities on the Adriatic sea, Venice and Dubrovnik, as examples. |
| Keywords: | tourism development, overtourism, qualitative growth, institutions, behavioral economics, Venice, Dubrovnik |
| JEL: | L83 Q56 |
| Date: | 2019–02–15 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:92213&r=all |
| By: | Couttenier, Mathieu; Hatte, Sophie; Thoenig, Mathias; Vlachos, Stephanos |
| Abstract: | We study how news coverage of immigrant criminality impacted municipality-level votes in the November 2009 "minaret ban" referendum in Switzerland. The campaign, successfully led by the populist Swiss People's Party, played aggressively on fears of Muslim immigration and linked Islam with terrorism and violence. We combine an exhaustive violent crime detection dataset with detailed information on crime coverage from 12 newspapers. The data allow us to quantify the extent of pre-vote media bias in the coverage of migrant criminality. We then estimate a theory-based voting equation in the cross-section of municipalities. Exploiting random variations in crime occurrences, we find a first-order, positive effect of news coverage on political support for the minaret ban. Counterfactual simulations show that, under a law forbidding newspapers to disclose a perpetrator's nationality, the vote in favor of the ban would have decreased by 5 percentage points (from 57.6% to 52.6%). |
| Keywords: | Immigration; populism; Violent Crimes; Vote |
| JEL: | D72 K42 L82 Z12 |
| Date: | 2019–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13496&r=all |