Evaluer les retombees economiques d'un reseau culturel: application a terre catalane

The national accounts make no attempt to take earnings from culture, as such, into account. This does not mean that the sums which people pay to go to concerts, visit monuments and museums and for other cultural phenomena are incalculable, for indeed the can be estimated in the same way as the spending of tourists. But to carry out a straight‐forward business audit of the investment in each cultural attraction, the revenues, return on the investment and so on would be to miss the point, or at least much of it. For much of the benefit from such activities comes from “knock‐on effects” such as VAT, the advantages of which spread well beyond the individual sites, and the local authorities responsible for the original investments. Studies in the tourism industry have shown that investments in touristic and cultural attractions have a “multiplier effect” on total spending by visitors. This article looks at a cultural project which sonsists of a network of attractions. It describes a method which makes it possible to assess the economic significance of such networks.