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on Cultural Economics |
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Issue of 2025–05–26
two papers chosen by Roberto Zanola, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Etienne Capron (HEC Montréal - HEC Montréal); Elie Saaoud (HEC Montréal - HEC Montréal) |
| Abstract: | While some studies have sought to clarify the role of spatial settings in organizing creativity, this relationship remains theoretically ambiguous, specifically when we consider the capacity for action offered by places. Therefore, we propose to revisit this issue through the concept of affordances, which originally refers to actors' relationship to their physical environments and how it generates possibilities for action. This conceptual chapter proposes a framework for place-based affordances that theorizes the material, social, and institutional possibilities for creative practices that emerge from one's attendance of a place. This framework is exemplified through a vignette of place attendance and usage by an artist practicing projection mapping in Montreal. Through this example drawn from artistic creation, the place-based affordances framework offers a new look at the generative power of places for organizing creativity. |
| Keywords: | Place-based affordances affordance theory organizing creativity places projection mapping, Place-based affordances, affordance theory, organizing, creativity, places, projection mapping |
| Date: | 2025–04–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05034010 |
| By: | Andrea Bernini (University of Oxford); Sven A. Hartmann (Trier University & Institut für Arbeitsrecht und Arbeitsbeziehungen in der Europäischen Union (IAAEU)) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the long-term impact of West German television exposure on smoking behavior in East Germany, with a focus on gender-specific responses. Using data from 1989 and 2002 and leveraging quasi-random variation in West German TV signal availability across East German regions, we find that TV exposure led to a substantial increase in smoking among women — by 10.7 percentage points in smoking probability and 68% in cigarette consumption — while having no measurable effect on men. This asymmetric effect reflects divergent pre-reunification norms: under socialism, female smoking was heavily stigmatized, and exposure to Western media relaxed these social constraints. The behavioral shift persisted over time, with exposed women reporting worse physical and mental health and higher healthcare utilization in 2002. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest a sizable increase in smoking-related mortality and healthcare costs. Our findings highlight how cultural integration through media can alter health behaviors and generate significant public health externalities in transitional societies. |
| Keywords: | Health, Smoking, Cultural Transmission, Television, Social Norms, German Reunification |
| JEL: | I12 I18 N34 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iaa:dpaper:202502 |