Despite numerous studies on skill development, we know little about the effects of extracurricular music activities on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how music training during childhood and youth affects the development of cognitive skills, school grades, personality,...

The paper analyses the impact of age on the ranking of recorded popular songs in the Dutch Radio2 Top2000 chart in the years 1999-2013. We measure the competition between the loss of collective memory and nostalgia with respect to popular songs. Nostalgic feelings seem to be relevant to recorded...

Despite numerous studies on skill development, we know little about the causal effects of music training on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how long-term music training during childhood and youth affects the development of cognitive skills, school grades, personality,...

Despite numerous studies on skill development, we know little about the causal effects of music training on cognitive and non-cognitive skills. This study examines how long-term music training during childhood and youth affects the development of cognitive skills, school grades, personality,...

Do lower input prices to creative production reduce output prices or do they increase product variety? We propose an evolutionary model connecting price dynamics in input markets to innovation and variety generation in output markets. Lower input prices may be competed away in market share...

The music world has had its share of Internet-led shake-ups. Digital piracy and the advertisement rules of platforms like YouTube are major concerns. But there are also opportunities: online marketing, arts education, cultural awareness, and nation branding are particularly notable. How can...

This study investigates the dose-response effects of making music on youth development. Identification is based on the conditional independence assumption and estimation is implemented using a recent double machine learning estimator. The study proposes solutions to two highly practically...

Teachers and mentors in creative fields ranging from scientific research to the arts may shape their students' skills and views of the craft, and in turn the work they produce. How significant is this influence, how long does it last, and are there consequences for the variety and quality of...

Recently, business models have reformed in the recorded music industry. Many have seen promise in the leveling of the playing field referred to as the ‘long tail effect'. Others predict a scaled-up presence of pop stars with an enhanced ‘superstar effect'. So which effect is evident in the...

Most creatives acquire professional talents by learning from others, but in most settings it is difficult to estimate the existence of long-term effects. This paper explores the transmission of skills over a period of more than seven centuries by focusing on the case of music composers. We ask...