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on Cultural Economics |
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Issue of 2025–08–11
four papers chosen by Roberto Zanola, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Samuel Bazzi; Martin Fiszbein |
| Abstract: | This chapter explores the impacts of migrants on the culture of their destinations. Migrants often assimilate to local social norms and practices, but they also tend to maintain their own culture. Sometimes, beyond preserving their culture, they influence their new neighbors. We propose a conceptual framework to understand when migrants shape culture at their destination—and how. We identify two key conditions for influence (ideological intensity and power structure) and three channels of influence (cultural spillovers, organizational mobilization, and political leverage). We combine insights from political economy, social psychology, and evolutionary approaches to illuminate pathways of influence in historical perspective. Our review offers a new perspective on the mechanisms of cultural transmission, using illustrative cases to characterize the various ways in which migrants shape culture in their destinations. |
| JEL: | D02 F22 J15 N30 P00 Z10 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34001 |
| By: | Tasnádi, Attila; Puppe, Clemens |
| Abstract: | In many professional activities humans are getting better generation by generation. This is supposed to be the case, for instance, in sports and in science. Is it true in the arts? In this paper, we consider violinists from the time period in which audio and video recordings became possible. Based on the number of YouTube views, and by employing different aggregation methods, we find that listening to violinists from the mid of the previous century does not seem to be significantly less attractive to audiences than listening to contemporary violinists. Methodologically, our analysis contributes to the growing literature on the aggregation of incomplete lists. In particular, we introduce a generalization of the Nash collective utility function for incomplete lists. |
| Keywords: | group decisions and negotiations, multi-criteria decision making, aggregation of incomplete lists, Nash collective utility function, top violinists |
| JEL: | D71 |
| Date: | 2025–07–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cvh:coecwp:2025/01 |
| By: | Stephan Heblich; Dávid Krisztián Nagy; Alex Trew; Yanos Zylberberg |
| Abstract: | Does industrial concentration shape the life and death of cities? We identify settlements from historical maps of England and Wales (1790–1820), isolate exogenous variation in their late 19th-century size and industrial concentration, and estimate the causal impact of size and concentration on later dynamics. Industrial concentration has a negative effect on long-run productivity—independent of industry trends and consistent with cross-industry Jacobs externalities. A spatial model quantifies the role of fundamentals, industry trends, and Jacobs externalities in shaping industry-city dynamics and isolates a new, dynamic trade-off in the design of place-based policies. |
| JEL: | F63 N93 O14 R13 |
| Date: | 2025–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34029 |
| By: | Makoto KADOWAKI; Sadao NAGAOKA; Takahiro MAEDA |
| Abstract: | The identification of relevant prior art is a key step in assessing an invention's contribution; however, it remains unclear whether and how applicants can contribute to this process through prior art disclosure. This study investigates how applicant disclosures causally affect patent examination performance using the Japanese Patent Office's 2002 policy reform requiring applicant disclosure as a natural experiment. We find that this reform has significantly improved the quality of applicant disclosure (as measured by its coverage of examiner citations of prior art), especially for high-quality inventions. The reform led to faster grant processing, a narrower initial patent scope, and fewer amendments between applications and grants, primarily through higher-quality disclosure. While the reform also led to a greater number of disclosures not used by examiners, which had the effect of slowing the grant process, this effect was dominated by the effect of higher quality. The reform also increased the total amount of prior art used by examiners and reduced both invalidation and rejection appeal trials through higher disclosure quality. Applicant disclosures complemented examiner search efforts, thereby enhancing the overall prior art base used in patent examinations. |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:25071 |