 Public provision vs. outsourcing of cultural services: Evidence from Italian citiesEnrico Bertacchini () and Chiara Dalle Nogare () European Journal of Political Economy, 2014, vol. 35, issue C, 168-182 Abstract: Cultural policy often implies the transfer of public resources to cultural institutions. In this contribution we focus on the determinants of a government's choice between subsidies to external cultural organizations and in-house cultural production. We argue that the determinants of grants in the cultural field may be the same as those of outsourced services, and we make reference to the empirical literature on the drivers of public services outsourcing. We consider Italian cities' cultural policies in the 1998–2008 period, a time when overall cultural expenditure shrank while cultural transfers increased. Using dynamic panel data analysis and controlling for specific economic, fiscal, and political characteristics of each city, we find that transfers to cultural organizations are negatively affected by asset specificity and more likely to occur in cities subject to fiscal stress. The results also highlight that the timing of elections plays a role. Keywords: Public cultural expenditure; Local government; Outsourcing (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:poleco:v:35:y:2014:i:c:p:168-182 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2014.06.004 Access Statistics for this article European Journal of Political Economy is currently edited by J. De Haan, A. L. Hillman and H. W. Ursprung More articles in European Journal of Political Economy from Elsevier |
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