Cultural allegiances whether inherited, imposed or chosen, affect economic activity. Many of these cultural layers – ethnic background, religion, language, ideological orientation, and artistic interests – spill over national boundaries. Cultural ideas travel the world along many routes from...

Consumer sovereignty is taken to be the aim of policy by which the nature and form of public intervention is identified, both in order to influence the provision of and also the demand for cultural services. Such services are defined by enumeration and include creative arts, performing arts and...

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the economic properties and the institutions governing the start-up and evolution of cultural districts. Cultural districts are a good example of economic development based on localized firms and local culture. The first part of the chapter (Sections 1–2)...

Museums fulfill many important functions in the art world and visits to museums are becoming an important leisure and holiday activity. This chapter surveys research about the functioning of museums from an economic point of view. Museum services are shaped by demand and supply factors and by...

The Economics of Superstars sets out to explain the relationship between talent and success in the arts, but there is no agreement about what this relationship is. But whatever its other features may be, superstardom means that market output is concentrated on just a few artists. Concentration...

It is argued that human capital theory applies only weakly to artists' decisions about investment in schooling and training and about occupational choice. However, the same can be said about the sorting model. What is lacking in cultural economics is an understanding of talent and creativity,...

This chapter considers economic issues and trends in the rock and roll industry, broadly defined. The analysis focuses on concert revenues, the main source of performers' income. Issues considered include: price measurement; concert price acceleration in the 1990s; the increased concentration of...

This chapter is an overview of a new kind of economics of the movies; it also is my attempt to lay a new foundation of the economics of art and culture. The essence of cultural goods is that they are creative goods that have no natural limit on their consumption or dissemination; they are...

While audience and participation surveys, as well as econometric demand studies, generally confirm that performing arts audiences are relatively elite, there are surprises. Education (despite conflicting causal interpretations) is a stronger determinant than income, but that evidence is more...

Attention to art and culture goes far back in the history of economic thought. In the seventeenth century those activities were viewed suspiciously as likely to be either wasteful extravagances of the aristocracy, or dangerous distractions for the working classes. Eighteenth century economic...