War and Creativity: Solving the War-Art Puzzle for Classical Music Composition

Karol Borowiecki

Economic Papers from Trinity College Dublin, Economics Department

Abstract: The relationship between conflict and artistic output is ambiguous. This paper proposes an explanation for the contradiction in research, which we term the war-art puzzle. We employ a global sample of 115 prominent classical composers born after 1800 and link their annual productivity with the incidence of wars. We construct age-productivity profiles and find that the impact of wars on creative production is markedly heterogeneous - composers' productivity was significantly higher during defensive or victorious international wars and lower during intra-state conflicts, offensive or lost international wars. the long-run.

Keywords: productivity; conflict; war; innovation; composer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 D74 F51 J24 N40 O31 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2011-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-eff, nep-his and nep-ino
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0711

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