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on Cultural Economics |
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Issue of 2026–03–02
eight papers chosen by Roberto Zanola, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Christian Peukert; Alexander Cuntz |
| Abstract: | This quantitative study examines how music IP rights are transforming into a global financial asset class, which is having an impact on artists and music ecosystems worldwide. New investors and digital platforms are changing the way creative works and rights are valued and monetised across diverse cultural contexts. By providing empirical evidence of these dynamics and identifying key stakeholders via the data, the study can help inform policymakers and potential changes to IP and other legal frameworks. The research draws on new data sources and original analyses of the latest trends in news media coverage and investment in music rights technology, as well as daily return data from rights trading platforms and information from official IP data sources. |
| Keywords: | Music IP finance, Music rights investment, Copyright registrations, Music royalties |
| JEL: | L82 O34 G24 G32 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wip:wpaper:99 |
| By: | Peter Tschmuck; Dennis Collopy; Christian Handke |
| Abstract: | This qualitative study looks at the transformation of music IP rights into a global financial asset class, which affects artists and music ecosystems worldwide, from K-pop markets in South Korea to legacy rock catalogues in the United States, regardless of genre. New investors and digital platforms have emerged and reshape how creative works and rights are valued and monetized across diverse cultural contexts. It seems crucial for policymakers to understand market opportunities and potential risk as well as identify key stakeholders in order to ensure that IP frameworks provide a sustainable economic foundation for the next generation of creative talent. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with industry experts and artists, case studies, and extensive desk research, this study explores the policy implications and economics of music rights trading and investment. |
| Keywords: | Music copyright, IP finance, Music rights valuation |
| JEL: | L82 O34 G24 G32 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wip:wpaper:98 |
| By: | Jana Friedrichsen; Julia Schwarz; Michel Clement |
| Abstract: | Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly reshaping society, including the music industry. Recent advancements in generative AI enable users to create music from text-based prompts, raising questions about public perception and valuation of AI-generated music. We conducted three studies with German-speaking participants (Study 1: N=2000, Study 2: N=425; Study 3: N=1248) to explore awareness, enjoyment, and willingness to pay for AI music. After finding no clear rejection of AI composed music in Study 1, Study 2 varied whether listeners knew the music was AI-generated. Study 3 involved regular listeners of pop and electronic dance music, manipulating song origin (human vs. AI) and disclosure. Results show that listeners generally could not distinguish between AI and human-made songs. When unaware, participants slightly preferred AI music and valued it equally. However, disclosing that AI had been used to create compositions reduced appreciation and willingness to pay. We explore how reactions differ by genre and individual attitudes toward AI and discuss implications for the music industry and for regulatory initiatives. |
| Keywords: | artificial intelligence, music, willingness-to-pay, ethics of AI |
| JEL: | D12 Z11 O33 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12405 |
| By: | Ioannis Laliotis; Christos A. Makridis |
| Abstract: | This paper documents the labour market position of artists across Europe and examines how it co-varies with public cultural spending. Using EU-LFS micro-data for 2009-2023, we compare artists to non-artists using harmonised measures of wage rank, employment, and non-standard work. Using within-country variation and controlling for demographic factors, artists rank substantially lower in the wage distribution: in the pooled sample, the estimated penalty is about 0.46 wage deciles relative to other salaried workers and about 0.28 deciles relative to other professionals. These earnings gaps coexist with higher exposure to non-standard employment, including part-time work, temporary contracts, and multiple job holding, with patterns that persist over the life cycle and appear in most countries. We then link individual outcomes to a country-year panel of real per capita public expenditure on cultural services. Higher cultural spending is associated with modest improvements in aggregate employment and lower part-time incidence, but these associations do not systematically differ for artists or arts graduates. The only consistent differential correlation is an increase in multiple job holding among arts graduates in higher-spending environments. Thus, changes in aggregate cultural spending are not sufficient on their own to narrow wage or job-quality gaps for artists, motivating a rethinking of cultural policy instruments toward mechanisms that more directly address labour market risks faced by cultural workers. |
| Keywords: | artists, cultural employment, public arts funding, creative economy, Europe, wage premium, culture |
| JEL: | Z11 J44 J31 J68 H52 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12483 |
| By: | Vishal R. Patel; Christopher M. Worsham; Michael Liu; Anupam B. Jena |
| Abstract: | Modern smartphones present new threats to road safety beyond talking and texting, but the real-world effects are difficult to study. One way to causally assess the impact of smartphones on road safety is to identify arbitrarily timed events during which smartphone-related distraction may exogenously increase – i.e., a situation that relies not on plausibly random variation in who uses smartphones while driving, but when smartphones are used. We investigated the impact of smartphones on road safety by examining traffic fatalities on days when smartphone use likely surges: the release of major music albums. Using event study analysis, we show that music streaming – an indicator for smartphone use, where streaming most often occurs – sharply increases, by nearly 40%, on dates of major music album releases, while U.S. traffic fatalities increase by nearly 15% on those same days. Mobile device use while driving is a known safety issue, but today’s smartphones present new and greater opportunities for driver distraction. Our study indicates how features of these phones may have important impacts on distracted driving and traffic fatalities. |
| JEL: | I1 I12 R40 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34866 |
| By: | William N. Goetzmann; Dong Huang; Milad Nozari |
| Abstract: | NFTs provided an extraordinary real-time laboratory for bubble economics: returns were exceptionally right-skewed, illiquidity pervaded even the most active platforms, and a handful of trades drove aggregate performance. Investors extrapolating from realized returns without recognizing selection bias and survivorship faced a substantial risk of disappointment. As our data and simulations confirm, successful NFT investing during the bubble required an almost perfect confluence of timing, liquidity, and luck. |
| JEL: | D44 G11 Z11 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34837 |
| By: | Sibo Liu; Alexey Makarin; Jinfeng Wu; Dong Zhang |
| Abstract: | We present the first systematic analysis of how countries cover each other in the news, using a newly constructed dataset of 55, 240 media sources from 176 countries between 2015 and 2022, drawing upon a corpus of 1.4 billion online news articles. We document a pattern of global media bias: countries with greater differences in democracy levels systematically portray each other more negatively, shaping both the sentiment and thematic content of coverage. This bias is especially pronounced when less democratic countries report on liberal democracies, when state-controlled media is involved, or when the reporting country experiences economic downturns or political turmoil. We corroborate these findings exploiting episodes of democratic erosion in a difference-in-differences design. Using similarities in how countries report on third countries, we construct and introduce a novel granular measure of global media alliances. Finally, we show that cross-country media sentiment predicts subsequent public attitudes. |
| Keywords: | media bias, democracy, information control, geopolitics, soft power |
| JEL: | P00 F51 D74 L82 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12459 |
| By: | Karsten Müller; Carlo Rasmus Schwarz; Zekai Shen |
| Abstract: | Social media platforms are often credited with empowering grassroots movements in the pursuit of political freedoms. In this paper, we show how social media can also be exploited by political elites to undermine democratic institutions, using the January 6th, 2021 Capitol insurrection as a case study. We present three main findings. First, by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in Twitter usage, we document that social media exposure predicts participation in the Capitol attack, donations for anti-democratic causes, beliefs in election fraud, and support for the January 6th rioters. Second, Donald Trump's tweets questioning the election's integrity were followed by spikes in "Stop the Steal" activity on Twitter and pro-Trump donations originating from high Twitter usage counties. Third, the insurrection and Trump's account deletion were followed by a decrease in the public expression of toxic political and "Stop the Steal" messaging by pro-Trump users on Twitter, but had little effect on privately held beliefs about the election outcome and pro-Trump donations. |
| Keywords: | social media, content moderation, January 6th, election denial |
| JEL: | L82 J15 O33 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12485 |