Performing Arts - The Economic Dilemma

by William J. Baumol

This classic study provides an extensive analysis of the major economic attributes of the performing audience composition, costs, income, organizational structure and remuneration of performers. The authors cleady demonstrate why the cost per performance and per attendance has always risen faster than the economy's rate of inflation, and indicate this situation is unlikely to change in the future. The book concludes with a summary discussion of general policy implications.

598 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 1968

Reviews

[Leonardo]

The direction of technological change has so far been discussed in terms of the enhancement of the productivity of capital or labour, but there is also an important issue concerning the bias in terms of sectors of the economy. Such a bias arises in an acute form in what is known as the Baumol effect, after the US economist William J. Baumol, who argued that productivity grows faster in certain sectors than in others, and that in some sectors there was no scope for producing more output per person. The classic example of the latter is that of a string quartet, but the Baumol effect has been taken to apply particularly to the public sector, where slower productivity growth has been taken to imply that the relative cost of public services, such as health care, education, and public administration, rises over time, creating fiscal problems. In its starkest form, if a person can either teach a class or build a car, and technical progress means that he or she can build two cars in place of one, then the relative cost of education is doubled if wages rise in line with productivity in manufacturing.

Inequality Pág.121

[Dayra]

I'm study Cultural Management in Buenos Aires, Argentina and I need to study this text