In 1857 in Manchester John Ruskin delivered two public lectures which he titled The Political Economy of Art. Can these lectures be seen in the history of economic thought as prefiguring the contemporary field of cultural economics? This article considers six issues of interest in the economics...

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...