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on Cultural Economics |
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Issue of 2026–05–18
three papers chosen by Roberto Zanola, Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Trine Bille (Copenhagen Business School); Hendrik Sonnabend (University of Hagen) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses gender differences in leadership in the German movie industry using a uniquely long-run dataset covering nearly 88, 000 films and more than 27, 000 directors from the late nineteenth century to 2023. Treating film directors as key leadership positions in a project-based creative labour market, we distinguish between career persistence and access to economically sustainable projects. Methodologically, we combine non-parametric survival functions and semi-parametric Cox proportional hazard models with film-level linear probability models including year fixed effects and detailed controls for experience, education, and production characteristics. This framework allows us to distinguish gender differences in exit behaviour from those in project allocation. We document a substantial historical underrepresentation of women, although participation has increased markedly since the 1960s. Survival estimates show no evidence that female directors exit the profession more rapidly than men once cohort and age-at-entry effects are accounted for. However, women are significantly less likely to direct commercial films—projects most closely associated with income generation. These gaps are large in unconditional models but largely explained by differences in accumulated experience. Conditional on commercial experience, women are no less likely than men to continue directing such projects. We further provide evidence suggesting that formal film education and public funding contribute to narrowing gender gaps, highlighting the role of institutions in shaping leadership opportunities. |
| Keywords: | leadership, Gender, Film Directors, Careers, Public Funding, Film Schools |
| JEL: | J16 L82 Z10 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cue:wpaper:awp-05-2026 |
| By: | Karasov, Oleksandr; Rinne, Tiina; Järv, Olle; Tenkanen, Henrikki (Aalto University) |
| Abstract: | Cultural ecosystem services (CES) lack a coherent, universal metric capturing the experiential quality of their use. We argue that the personal quality of time spent outdoors, adapted from cultural consumption such as books, music, or films, offers such a metric, but its empirical use requires scalable, secure, and accessible participatory mapping infrastructures. Existing public participatory GIS (PPGIS) tools rely on standalone applications, costly recruitment, and predominantly one-way data flows from citizens to researchers. These limitations are exacerbated in crisis contexts, such as the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, where physical gatherings and the handling of personal data pose security risks. We address both gaps with an open-source, modular Python framework that transforms Telegram, a widely popular messenger in Ukraine, into a secure, GDPR-compliant PPGIS tool, complemented by an interactive dashboard. We piloted the 'Pryroda' Telegram bot along the Dnipro waterfront in Kremenchuk, central Ukraine, in 2025. 219 anonymous participants mapped 230 locations, of which 82% were rated as enjoyable. Random Forest models and statistical association tests consistently showed that the social and behavioural context of a visit, as well as access mode, predict enjoyment more strongly than visitors' socioeconomic profiles, while perceived negative changes since 2022 emerged as the strongest individual-level correlate of poor experience. The framework eliminates installation, recruitment, and licensing costs that constrain PPGIS in developing and crisis settings, and demonstrates that quality of time can serve as a foundation for a coherent theory of value in CES research. |
| Date: | 2026–05–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:42jxy_v1 |
| By: | Michal Brzezinski (University of Warsaw, Faculty of Economic Sciences) |
| Abstract: | Cultural heterogeneity—the within-country dispersion of values measured across hundreds of survey items—predicts populist voting across 60 democracies from 1970 to 2019. I compute fractionalization and polarization indices on Integrated Values Survey value items and regress three populism measures on these indices in a dynamic two-way fixed-effects panel with country-level clustering. A one-within-country-standard-deviation increase in cultural polarization is associated with a rise in vote-weighted ideational populism of about 14\ robust to system-GMM and to a sensitivity analysis for selection on unobservables. A V-Party-based GAL–TAN decomposition shows that the mobilization skews toward culturally-authoritarian parties, with no detectable movement in the progressive-libertarian camp. Including behavioral items in the heterogeneity measure eliminates the effect; the values-versus-behaviors boundary is empirically decisive. |
| Keywords: | populism, cultural heterogeneity, fractionalization, polarization, GAL–TAN |
| JEL: | D72 Z13 P16 C23 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2026-12 |