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on Cultural Economics |
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Issue of 2016‒02‒12
two papers chosen by Roberto Zanola Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Campaniello, Nadia; Richiardi, Matteo |
| Abstract: | This paper estimates the causal relationship between the supply of art and tourist flows. We use aggregate bilateral data on tourist flows and on museums in the twenty Italian regions. To solve the potential endogeneity of the supply of museums we use three different empirical strategies: we control for bilateral macro-area dummies, we compute the degree of selection on unobservables relative to observables which would be necessary to drive the result to zero and, finally, we adopt a 2SLS approach that uses a measure of historical patronage, the number of noble families, as an instrument for the number of museums. We find strong evidence of a causal relationship between museums and tourist flows. Local supply of art helps not only attracting cultural consumers from other regions, but retaining residents who would otherwise visit other regions to consume arts. We conclude the paper with a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the economic impact (driven by tourism) of museums. |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esx:essedp:15638&r=cul |
| By: | Larbi Alaoui (Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona Graduate School of Economics); Fabrizio Germano (Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona Graduate School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We develop a theory of news coverage in environments of information abundance that include both new and traditional news media, from online and print newspapers to radio and television. News consumers are time-constrained and browse through news items that are available across competing outlets, choosing which outlets to access and which stories to read or skip. Media firms are aware of consumers’ preferences and constraints, and decide on rankings of news items that maximize their profits. We find that the news consumed in equilibrium is highly sensitive to the details of the environment. We show that even when readers and outlets are rational and unbiased, readers may consume more than they would like to, and the news items they consume may be significantly different from the ones they prefer. Important news items may be crowded out. Next, we derive implications on diverse aspects of current media, including a rationale for tabloid news, a rationale for why readers prefer like-minded news, and how advertising can contribute to crowding out news. We also analyze methods for restoring reader-efficient standards and discuss the political economy implications of the theory. |
| Keywords: | news markets,time constrained consumers,digital media,news coverage,public media |
| Date: | 2015–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-01251522&r=cul |