Eppur si muove: an evaluation of museum policy reform in Italy

Maria Rosaria Alfano (), Anna Laura Baraldi () and Claudia Cantabene
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Maria Rosaria Alfano: Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”
Anna Laura Baraldi: Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”

Journal of Cultural Economics, 2023, vol. 47, issue 1, No 4, 97-131

Abstract: Abstract This study evaluates the effectiveness of a novel cultural policy to recover the valorization function of Italian state museums by increasing managerial autonomy. The policy is part of the Franceschini reform, introduced in 2014, that concerns the governance of cultural institutions and was justified by the severe budget constraints resulting from economic crisis and a spending review. Given the staggered implementation of the reform across 32 museums that obtained special autonomy, we apply a difference-in-differences strategy that allows to properly investigate the causal effect of the policy reform on museums’ outcome measures of exhibition function, as visitors and revenue from admissions. Our findings robustly support the effectiveness of the cultural policy reform in terms these outcomes. Although we provide some suggestive evidence of the efficacy of museums’ management (through a number of communication and supplementary services), this study suffers of the limitations due to the lack of more appropriate measures on how successful changes in management have been. However, results aim to offer policy recommendations in favor of greater managerial and financial autonomy of state museums that, while preserving their conservation function, can promote the widespread utilization of collections ensuring museums’ greater sustainability.

Keywords: Cultural institutions; Public policy; Public sector performance; Managerial autonomy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 H41 Z11 Z18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10824-022-09447-6

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