The impact of a public voucher for the arts: evidence from the Italian 18app

Andrea Baldin (), Anna Marenzi () and Francesca Zantomio
Additional contact information
Andrea Baldin: Ca' Foscari University of Venice
Anna Marenzi: Ca' Foscari University of Venice

Working papers from Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica

Abstract: We provide novel evidence on the impact of a public voucher scheme for cultural consumption. The voucher was introduced in Italy in 2016 for citizens aged 18 year old. We use repeated cross-sections from the annual household survey 'Aspects of Daily Life' for the period 2013-2019 and combine Entropy Balancing with Difference-in-Difference estimation to assess the voucher causal effect on cultural consumption. We find a significant impact of the cultural voucher in fostering participation in cinema, on-classic concerts and reading books and online/e-books, with the effect driven by lower SES individuals. Overall, estimated effects suggest a less-than-total crowding out of public resources. The voucher also generated some spillover effects at the household level, and, in the case of cinema, resulted in a sustained higher consumption, even after the financial support terminated.

Keywords: vouchers; public subsidies; impact evaluation; cultural consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D12 H50 Z18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.siepweb.it/siep/wp/wp-content/uploads/2 ... 782_Baldin_et_al.pdf Full text (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:ipu:wpaper:116

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica Corso Strada Nuova 65 27100 Pavia Italia.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Monica Bozzano ().