David Throsby

• Macquarie University

Artists as Workers: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia, by David Throsby and Katya Petetskaya, is the seventh in a landmark study, carried out independently over the last four decades by Professor Throsby and colleagues at Macquarie University, with support from Creative Australia (previously the Australia Council for the Arts)....

In economics, the concept of preferences is fundamental to the theory of choice. In many demand analyses, preferences are taken as given, although interesting questions can be asked about how they originate. In this paper, we consider the formation of preferences in demand for live theatre. We propose a model where preferences are derived from cert...

The relationship between trade liberalisation and cultural diversity is a long-standing and controversial issue in many countries that strive to promote free flow of cultural trade as well as to sustain local cultural production. The controversy is partly attributable to multiple meanings attached to the notion of cultural diversity. In this paper...

Literary festivals have emerged as a key component of development strategies in the global south. The unique cultural, social, and commercial aspects of these events can contribute to the promotion of sustainable cultural and economic development, and can assist in destination branding for the locations where they are held. This paper presents an e...

The report investigates the experiences of Australian authors in the contemporary national and international book industry. It examines authors’ experiences of publishing, promotional strategies, changes in income, and copyright infringement. It also examines whether authors are changing their creative and work practices in response to shifts in th...

There is a gap between theory and practice in the valuation of urban cultural heritage assets and the application of valuation methods in the policy arena. This special issue addresses current debates in urban heritage conservation that engage with the conceptual, methodological and practical problems in the field. In this introductory paper, we be...

Studies aiming at valuing cultural and natural heritage projects are often focussed on one or only a few sites, whereas planning decisions concerning the allocation of public funds to heritage conservation deal with classes of heritage rather than single sites. In addition, such planning decisions are almost always concerned with non-monetary value...

In proposing strategies for urban development in cities and towns with significant cultural heritage assets, there is considerable scope for implementation of projects involving rehabilitation of heritage as an alternative to demolition and replacement. Such projects are particularly relevant in cases where the heritage is concentrated in a histori...

This Report presents the results of a study that forms one component of a major National Survey of Remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Artists. The National Survey is being undertaken in the Department of Economics at Macquarie University progressively across six regions in remote Australia. The present Report relates to the implementation...

This Report presents the results of a study that forms one component of a major National Survey of Remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Artists. The National Survey is being undertaken in the Department of Economics at Macquarie University progressively across six regions in remote Australia. The present Report relates to the implementation...

'Making Art Work: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia' by David Throsby and Katya Petetskaya is the sixth in a series carried out independently over thirty years by Professor Throsby at Macquarie University, with funding from the Australia Council. The series tracks trends in the lives and working conditions of Australian artists...

The book The Composer in the Market Place by Alan Peacock and Ronald Weir was published in 1975. In the first chapter of the book the authors give an account of the ways in which composers work in a difficult economic environment. The present chapter considers whether the economic circumstances of composers have changed over the 40 years since the...

The concepts of sustainability, and of the more specific notion of sustainable development, have become entrenched in national and international policy making over the last half century. However, little attention has been paid to sustainability as it relates to indigenous communities. This article discusses sustainability concepts as understood in...

Many towns and cities in countries of the developing world contain a historic centre comprising streets, buildings and traditional activities that have resisted the forces of modernisation. However, the inexorable pressures of population growth and urban expansion often pose a serious threat to these heritage assets which are seen as standing in th...

This paper reports the results of a survey investigating the experiences of Australian authors in the contemporary international book industry – in particular, whether authors are adapting their creative and work practices in response to the technological changes that are currently affecting the book industry worldwide. More than one thousand autho...

Amongst the range of possible strategies to deal with ongoing development challenges facing the Pacific Island economies, one that has some potential is a policy focus on stimulating the creative or cultural industries. This article reviews the rise in interest around the world in the concept of the so-called creative economy and its role in sustai...

A long-standing debate in the economics of art and culture is concerned with the adequacy or otherwise of the theory of value in economics to capture a full representation of the value of cultural phenomena. At a theoretical level it has been proposed that a distinct form of value is embodied in or yielded by cultural goods and services that is rel...

Jordan’s unique cultural and historical assets are a major draw card in attracting international tourists and in earning much-needed foreign exchange to support the Jordanian economy. The tourism industry is also of critical importance as a significant employer of labor. But it is becoming increasingly apparent that the potential of the industry is...

Digital broadcast technologies have expanded the virtual capacity of live performing arts venues, but they have also raised concerns about possible cannibalisation of box office revenues. We report the results of a quasi-field experiment involving the Royal National Theatre’s live broadcasts of theatre to digital cinemas in the UK and find that, if...

The cultural sector of a city contributes in a variety of ways to promoting the livability, vitality and sustainability of the cities in which it is located. In this paper, we consider the sorts of economic functions performed by the cultural sector, conceptualising the city in economic terms as a conglomeration of different types of capital with a...

Non‐pecuniary payoff is a significant component of the rewards to workers – artists, academics, and sports people – and to investments in assets, such as paintings. This paper explores the implications of partial input payment via psychic rewards under a range of assumptions concerning mobility and homogeneity of factors in markets for both labor a...

Cultural policy is an area of public policy‐making with significant economic content. This paper suggests five areas where the theories, tools, and methods of economic analysis can make a contribution to the formation of a rational cultural policy: support for the creative arts; cultural goods in international trade; the management of cultural asse...

The concept of sustainability, or sustainable development, was one of the key ideas motivating the evolution of thinking during the 1990s about the possibilities for a new international instrument in the area of culture. Interest in sustainability was especially relevant to developing countries. It was becoming increasingly clear that the pre-emine...

Publicly-funded cultural institutions such as theatre companies, symphony orchestras, museums, libraries and so on are increasingly engaging with new technologies as a means of improving their operational efficiency and extending the range of ways in which they pursue their cultural missions. For example, opera companies are broadcasting performanc...

A process of corporatisation of the six State-based symphony orchestras was implemented by the Australian Government in the 1990s. This article discusses corporatisation theory as it applies to firms in the cultural sector, highlighting the peculiarities of symphony orchestras as productive enterprises. The program for corporatisation of the Austra...

Although quite a lot is known about the economics of war and conflict,rather less is known about the economics of peace. In this article we address the question - What are the major factors likely to lead countries toward peacefulness? We categorize these factors in three groups: economic, political, and socio-demographic, and test a set of hypothe...

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 of art and culture: cultural capital; value and valuat...

Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art. By GalensonDavid W.. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi, 443. $90.00, cloth; $26.99, paper. - Volume 71 Issue 1 - DAVID THROSBY

This article focuses attention on a somewhat overlooked component of the career portfolios of practising professional artists, namely their non-arts work. Although it is widely known that artists hold multiple jobs for a variety of reasons, there is little information on which jobs artists take on, whether they can make use of their creative skills...

Artistic labour is characterised by features that combine to set artists apart from other workers when viewed in terms of their labour market behaviour. Here, the value of a work of art can be simplified down to two essential elements - the work's economic value, and its cultural value, measured in terms of criteria of artistic worth such as aesthe...

Cultural policy is changing. Traditionally, cultural policies have been concerned with providing financial support for the arts, for cultural heritage and for institutions such as museums and galleries. In recent years, around the world, interest has grown in the creative industries as a source of innovation and economic dynamism. This book argues...

This research project on the valuation of cultural heritage is developing a methodology for a quantitative valuation study of the use and non-use values of historic heritage places. The methodology developed in this project will provide a template for subsequent empirical applications to generate data of use in the formulation of heritage policies...

This paper considers the explicit/implicit cultural policy distinction from the viewpoint of economics, suggesting that some economic policies have a hidden cultural purpose, and therefore qualify as implicit cultural policy. Examples in the public policy arena are drawn from macroeconomic policy, immigration, taxation, labour market policy, media...

This paper examines the assumptions and structure of the concentric circles model of the cultural industries. Empirical data for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US are used to illustrate the model's key characteristic: the proposition that the cultural content of the output of the cultural industries declines as one moves outwards fr...

Alternative definitions of the cultural industries lead to the construction of different models of the cultural production sector of the economy and hence to a different array of specific industries which are contained within the sector. In turn this implies not just differing estimates of the contribution of the cultural industries to output and e...

This paper reports some new cost functions for the Australian university sector, estimated using pooled data at the interinstitution level and cross-section data at the interfaculty level. The results shed some light on scale relationships between and within universities in Australia, and enable some quantification of the cost differences between t...

The paper is aimed at giving some theoretical and practical guidelinesfor the future implementation of art. 13 of the Unesco Convention, starting from a clarification of the concept of «sustainable development», brought about in 1970 by the Club of Rome, and of its further evolution, including the recognition of the essential cultural dimensions of...

The application of economic theory and analysis to problems in the performing arts (music, theatre, dance), the visual and literary arts and other art forms has expanded greatly over the last 30 years. A basic issue has been to identify the ways in which artistic goods and services differ from other goods and services in the economy, thereby warran...

Background The guiding hypothesis on which this volume is based is that a distinction can be made between economic and cultural value, and that it is the nature of these twin concepts of value, how they are formed and how they relate or do not relate to each other, that needs to be investigated. These two concepts run like a leitmotiv through the v...

Contributions to the literature on the economics of the arts are reviewed covering the period 1975 to date. It is argued that although the work surveyed is uneven in quality and incomplete in its coverage, it has made sufficient impact to establish the economics of the arts as a significant area in the development of economic theory and analysis. T...

Recent research has highlighted ways in which the labour market behaviour of artists differs from the predictions of conventional theory. This paper considers one particular aspect of artists’ labour supply, i.e. the extent to which preferred time allocations to creative work can be realised, given the multiple job-holding and other characteristics...

In this paper I consider the development of cultural economics at an international level over the twenty-one years of the Italian association's existence, as a means of providing a context within which contributions to this issue of the journal, dealing specifically with the Italian experience, can be placed. This paper is not intended to be a comp...

This paper considers recent advances in the economics of cultural heritage that have relevance for regional analysis. Concepts of cultural capital, cultural value and culturally sustainable development are defined, and their implications for the evaluation of benefits and costs of heritage projects in a regional context are discussed, with particul...

Much recent discussion surrounding valuation of the arts and culture, particularly in the policy arena, has been dominated by a concern to identify an economic and financial basis for valuation of art works, arts, activities and more general ways in which we express our culture. Whereas a great deal can be gained from a fuller understanding of the...

Creativity is a basic human trait that comes into play in a variety of contexts, including the production of art. It relates to the capacity of individuals to think inventively and imaginatively and to go beyond traditional ways of solving problems. In this chapter we consider various definitions of creativity and proceed to consider theories and m...

This chapter shows how economic theory and public policy analysis can illuminate decision-making relating to cultural heritage. We argue that from an economic viewpoint the appropriate conceptualisation of heritage is as a capital asset. Regarding heritage as cultural capital invites consideration of sustainability aspects, in parallel with the tre...

The overview of the economics of art and culture that is presented in this chapter has been intended to provide both an interpretation of the principal concerns of the field of cultural economics, as well as an introduction to the various chapters in this volume. Several chapters in this volume begin with the meaning of the words like “art” and “cu...

This paper proposes a production function for artistic output in which quantity and quality of output are specified as joint products from the inputs of labour and capital provided by individual artists. A model is constructed specifying the quantity of creative and commercial output and the quality of creative output as a function of inputs of lab...

1. Background Many people working in arts education will have had the experience of needing to spell out the economic impacts of some project or activity in which they are engaged. It may be a research investigation into the effects of music education on children in primary school; it may be a proposal to teach theatre skills to disadvantaged youth...

This chapter shows how economic theory and public policy analysis can illuminate decision-making relating to cultural heritage. We argue that from an economic viewpoint the appropriate conceptualisation of heritage is as a capital asset. Regarding heritage as cultural capital invites consideration of sustainability aspects, in parallel with the tre...

The concept of sustainable development as defined in ecological terms can be extended to apply to culture by recognising parallels between the concepts of natural and cultural capital. This paper reviews the definitions of both these forms of capital and shows how they contribute to sustainability. Criteria for weak and strong sustainability are co...

Contingent valuation methods (CVM) are now well established as a means of measuring the nonmarket demand for cultural goods and services. When combined with valuations provided through market processes (where relevant), an overall assessment of the economic value of cultural commodities can be obtained. Within a neoclassical framework, such assessm...

The recent growth of interest in the cultural industries and their role in employment creation has focussed attention on the nature of the artistic labour force. This paper considers the definition and identification of cultural workers in the economy, with particular reference to the types of data needed for empirical research on artists. I begin...

Whose preferences determine the tradeoff between security and civilian output in deciding upon budget allocations to defence? This paper considers the role that consumer preferences might play in influencing military spending. We propose normative criteria to judge the economic or political efficiency of defence provision at a given time, and test...

In an increasingly globalised world, economic and cultural imperatives can be seen as two of the most powerful forces shaping human behaviour. This book considers the relationship between economics and culture both as areas of intellectual discourse, and as systems of societal organisation. Adopting a broad definition of culture, it explores the ec...

Economists traditionally distinguish between three forms of capital: physical capital, human capital and natural capital. This paper proposes a fourth type of capital, cultural capital. An item of cultural capital is defined as an asset embodying cultural value. The paper considers usage of the term “cultural capital” in other discourses, notably s...

This paper demonstrates the formulation and computation of major items of benefit and cost that might be included in an evaluation of social rates of return to foreign study, and considers the question of incidence of measured effects between sending, host and third countries. Interest is focused especially on the South/North flow of students at po...

The protection and conservation of cultural heritage, whether it is in the form of archaeological sites, artefacts, buildings, groups of buildings, works of art, or whatever else, has long been a matter that has lain beyond the reach or interest of economics. Decisions as to what should be characterized as heritage, how much of it is worth keeping,...

On the past decade, higher eduction has undergone a massive expansion. As a result of this growth, and the way in which it has taken place, attention needs to be given to a whole range of issues. These include : scale of higher education, funding, university/government relations, research, diversity, quality, higher education and vocational educati...

The relationship between the quality of political institutions and the performance of regulation has recently assumed greater prominence in the policy debate on the effectiveness of infrastructure industry reforms. Taking the view that political accountability is a key factor linking political and regulatory structures and processes, this article e...

In this paper it is argued that systems analysis can provide a means of bringing economic and cultural systems together in a unified framework. It is then proposed that a link between economics and culture can be established through the concept of culturally sustainable development, definable in terms of a set of criteria relating to advancement of...

The theory of labour supply is predicated on the assumption that work is simply a means to income. Workers are assumed to have a positive preference for leisure time and a negative preference or disutility for time spent working. The standard model shows leisure (the obverse of work time) and income as normal goods with a convex preference system....

Over the last two decades, research into the role of education in economic development has begun to pay attention to educational quality and its effect on learning outcomes. In this paper recent research on educational quality is reviewed and its application to the island economies of the South Pacific is assessed. While there is considerable varia...

Labour market economics has established a clear theoretical foundation for analysing the labour supply decisions of workers and for identifying the determinants of their incomes. Empirical testing of hypotheses in this area has indicated that for the majority of workers financial motives play an important if not dominant role in decision making. La...

This paper discusses the financial impacts of foreign student enrolments within a cost-benefit framework. It considers both direct and indirect costs associated with tertiary institutions, suggests ways of adjusting the cost-benefit approach for analyses at the national level and poses several questions related to financial issues which are critica...

Conclusion In this paper some of the problems and prospects in studying the role of quality in demand for the theatre have been discussed. A set of criteria for evaluating quality judgments in the performing arts has been proposed, and in a limited way some of these criteria have been used in estimating demand and utility functions. Although result...

Australian government policy towards overseas students has been discussed in two recent government reports. Th is paper puts forward the arguments against which the economic aspect s of these two reports can be judged, discussing the theoretical basi s for regulation by fees and quotas. Despite some recent moves in the right direction, Australian p...

This paper provides new evidence on bias in preference revelation and valuation of public goods. It does so through the systematic definition of free-rider, mixed-good, information and social choice problems and by a survey application to the case of valuing social benefit from the arts. These sources of bias are each found to be significant. It is...

This paper traces the perceptions of the agricultural sector held by economists over the last three centuries, with particular emphasis on how the evolution of these ideas has influenced the state of present-day thinking about the economic role of agriculture in developed and developing economies. The paper begins with the seventeenth and eighteent...

This paper reports some new cost functions for the Australian university sector, estimated using pooled data at the interinstitution level and cross-section data at the interfaculty level. The results shed some light on scale relationships between and within universities in Australia, and enable some quantification of the cost differences between t...