nep-cul New Economics Papers
on Cultural Economics
Issue of 2021‒02‒01
five papers chosen by
Roberto Zanola
Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale

  1. Economic dimension of crimes against cultural-historical and archaeological heritage (EN) By Shteryo Nozharov
  2. Health's kitchen: TV, edutainment and nutrition By Principe, Francesco; Carrieri, Vincenzo
  3. Artists’ Labour Market and Gender: Evidence from German visual artists By Maria Marchenko; Hendrik Sonnabend
  4. Measuring national happiness with music By Benetos, Emmanouil; Ragano, Alessandro; Sgroi, Daniel; Tuckwell, Anthony
  5. TV superstars: how a new technology disrupted the entertainment industry By Felix Koenig

  1. By: Shteryo Nozharov
    Abstract: The publication is one of the first studies of its kind, devoted to the economic dimension of crimes against cultural and archaeological heritage. Lack of research in this area is largely due to irregular global prevalence vague definition of economic value of the damage these crimes cause to the society at national and global level, to present and future generations. The author uses classical models of Becker and Freeman, by modifying and complementing them with the tools of economics of culture based on the values of non-use. The model tries to determine the opportunity costs of this type of crime in several scenarios and based on this to determine the extent of their limitation at an affordable cost to society and raising public benefits of conservation of World and National Heritage.
    Date: 2020–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2012.09113&r=all
  2. By: Principe, Francesco; Carrieri, Vincenzo
    Abstract: Does media exposure affect health behaviours? And how? We exploit the idiosyncratic switchover to digital television across Italian regions which exogenously increased the number of free view national channels and we link this to high-frequency data on the supply of food-related contents on the TV. We find that increased exposure to these contents improved the size and the composition of households' food baskets and, in particular, caused a reduction of expenditure on food high in fats and carbohydrates and an increase on food high in protein. Consistently with such a change in food basket composition, we also document a significant reduction in BMI among individuals more exposed to food-related TV contents which is not explained by any change in physical activity. Finally, we find support for the imitation and learning-bywatching mechanism as driving our results, by documenting a significant increase in the volume of Google and YouTube searches for recipes and video-recipes. Our findings question the health-related negative stereotypes often associated with TV exposure and highlight its potential as a brand-new health policy lever.
    Keywords: Food shows,dietary patterns,digital switchover,home cooking
    JEL: D12 I12 L82
    Date: 2020
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:883&r=all
  3. By: Maria Marchenko (Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business); Hendrik Sonnabend (Department of Economics and Business Administration, University of Hagen)
    Abstract: Using comprehensive data from German visual artists, we provide strong empirical evidence of a gender gap in revenues. We find that female artists have significantly lower revenues from the art market and are about ten percentage points less likely to remain in the top category over three years. This gap persists in the most prominent art forms and is more pronounced for younger artists. Only 30 to 40 percent of these gaps can be explained by differences in observable characteristics. We also find differences in the networking behaviour of the artists of different genders: females are connecting more, whereas males tend to create tighter links, suggesting the importance of the latter for the art market.
    Keywords: art market, artists’ earnings, gender gaps
    JEL: J4 J16 Z11
    Date: 2020–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wiw:wiwwuw:wuwp307&r=all
  4. By: Benetos, Emmanouil (Queen Mary University of London and The Alan Turing Institute.); Ragano, Alessandro (University College Dublin.); Sgroi, Daniel (University of Warwick, ESRC CAGE Centre and IZA Bonn.); Tuckwell, Anthony (University of Warwick and ESRC CAGE Centre.)
    Abstract: We propose a new measure for national happiness based on the emotional content of a country’s most popular songs. Using machine learning to detect the valence of the UK’s chart-topping song of each year since the 1970s, we find that it reliably predicts the leading survey-based measure of life satisfaction. Moreover, we find that music valence is better able to predict life satisfaction than a recently-proposed measure of happiness based on the valence of words in books (Hills et al., 2019). Our results have implications for the role of music in society, and at the same time validate a new use of music as a measure of public sentiment. JEL codes: N30, Z11, Z13
    Keywords: subjective wellbeing ; life satisfaction ; national happiness ; music information ; retrieval, machine learning. JEL Classification: N30 ; Z11 ; Z13
    Date: 2021
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1326&r=all
  5. By: Felix Koenig
    Abstract: The rollout of television to virtually every household in the United States in the mid-twentieth century created a potentially huge audience for people working in the entertainment industry. As Felix Koenig explains, this experience illustrates how new technologies can have a disruptive impact on labour markets: a handful of superstars were richly rewarded, but the majority of entertainers ended up worse off.
    Keywords: Superstar Effect, inequality, top incomes, technical change
    JEL: J31 J23 O33 D31
    Date: 2020–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cep:cepcnp:574&r=all

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