Is theatre efficiency affected by the legal form type? A case study of German public theatres

Marta Zieba

No WP032013, Working Papers from University of Limerick, Department of Economics

Abstract: The paper aims at exploring the economic efficiency of the performing arts organisations. A parametric stochastic frontier approach is presented as a way of measuring the performance of cultural institutions. In particular, using German public theatres as a case study and summarising the empirical findings obtained in Zieba and Newman (2013), this paper examines how the efficiency of publicly funded performing arts firms, operating under different organisational structures, is affected by two types of shocks. First, we consider what happens to efficiency when there is a funding shock and second, we consider the effect on efficiency of an increase in competition. The identification of these effects was made possible by the natural experiment of the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990. The results suggest that theatres organised under public law are more efficient than theatres organised under private law. However, when exposed to the exogenous demand shock after reunification, the theatres organised under private law react positively to this competition shock as measured by their efficiency scores confirming that they better react to the changing market conditions than theatres organised as public legal forms.

Keywords: cultural economics; cultural management; theatre (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2013-03, Revised 2013-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-eff and nep-eur
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Tafter Journal, November 2013

Downloads: (external link)
https://ul-econ.github.io/RePEc/pdf/ul-econ-wp-2013-03.pdf Revised version, July 2013 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lim:wpaper:032013

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Limerick, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lukas Kuld ().