Author: Seaman, Bruce A.

Publication Year: 1979

Media Type: Book

Summary:

Paper presented at First International Conference on Arts and Economics, sponsored by the Association for Cultural Economics, held in Edinburgh, Scotland, August 8-10, 1979. Comment by James L. Shanahan appears on p. 95-96.

Abstract:

Paper presented at First International Conference on Arts and Economics, sponsored by the Association for Cultural Economics, held in Edinburgh, Scotland, August 8-10, 1979. Comment by James L. Shanahan appears on p. 95-96.

Increased government support for the arts in the in the last decade has caused some concern that private support is being crowded out, that public support is substituting to some degree for private funding that would have been forthcoming. This possibility is particularly interesting in the because of the great variety and importance of private funding in contrast to that found in most other countries. In addition to private box office payments (earned income for art groups), individual voluntary contributions and grants from corporations and from nonprofit foundations contribute significantly to the support of both museums and performing arts organizations.

Here a theoretical foundation is suggested to evaluate the degree of substitutability between local government subsidies and local individual contributions. A simultaneous system of arts funding equations is also tested. Cross-section data on funding sources for the major performing arts groups and museums in forty-seven standard metropolitan statistical areas (SMSAs) are used in the empirical analysis. While the model is used to investigate the relationship between individual contributions and government subsidies, it could conceivably be expanded to investigate the relationship among other sources of income for the arts. (p. 80).

CONTENTS
A suggested framework.
The relationship between contributions and subsidies.
Substitution versus complementarity.
Efficiency versus patronal motives for demanding public funding.
Empirical testing.
Conclusion.
Notes.
References [bibliography].

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Private Sector