Culture Concentration

Stephen Sheppard

No 2014-04, Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, Williams College

Abstract: Many cities contain local agglomerations of cultural organizations. The "Museum Mile" portion of 5th Avenue in New York, the Museumplein in Amsterdam, Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London are famous examples, and there are hundreds of others large and small. These clusters may arise for some of the same reasons that other agglomerations occur, although the cultural organizations that comprise them have more complex objective functions than the profit-maximizing firms whose agglomeration is more frequently studied. In this paper we assemble micro-geographic data on cultural non-profits in US urban areas from 1989 through 2009. We calculate several indices of concentration and dispersion, and assemble a panel data set to explore the impact of these concentrations on local economic well-being. We also present evidence consistent with a hypothesis that there are real agglomeration economies at work, lowering production costs and permitting a larger number of cultural organizations per capita in urban areas where the organizations are more clustered.

JEL-codes: L30 R30 Z18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2014-01, Revised 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-geo and nep-ure
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