Baumol’s Cost-Disease, Efficiency, and Productivity in the Performing Arts: An Analysis of German Public Theaters

Anne-Kathrin Last () and Heike Wetzel
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Anne-Kathrin Last: Institute of Economics, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany

No 173, Working Paper Series in Economics from University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics

Abstract: This paper analyzes the productivity development in the German public theater sector for the seasons 1991/1992-2005/2006. Using a stochastic distance frontier approach that allows to decompose total factor productivity change into different sources we examine (a) whether Baumol’s cost-disease hypothesis is valid in this sector and (b) if so, whether its negative influence on productivity can be compensated by efficiency gains. The findings indicate an increase in real unit labor cost as a result of rising wage rates and, thus, support the cost- disease hypothesis. Furthermore, increasing returns to scale are observed for the majority of the theaters which implies that significant efficiency gains can be realized by the exploitation of scale economies. However, because of the increasing unit labor cost and an increasing scale inefficiency we find an overall decrease in average productivity of about 8 percent within the sample period.

Keywords: Public theaters; cost-disease; efficiency; stochastic frontier analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 O12 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2010-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Journal Article: Baumol’s cost disease, efficiency, and productivity in the performing arts: an analysis of german public theaters (2011)
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