Cultural heritage markets: are traders traitors? Winners and losers from cross-border shifts of historical artefacts

Jora Octavian-Dragomir (), Apăvăloaei Matei-Alexandru () and Mihaela Iacob
Additional contact information
Jora Octavian-Dragomir: The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania
Apăvăloaei Matei-Alexandru: The Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania

Management & Marketing, 2018, vol. 13, issue 2, 897-912

Abstract: The concept of cultural heritage covers the tangible and intangible things bequeathed from the past generations along with a spiritual signification, beyond any other serviceableness. Anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers and aesthetes are the critical reviewers of the field, while legalists and economists contribute with their own concerns: regulation and evaluation. Be it of tangible nature – i.e., buildings, sites, paintings, sculptures or various other artefacts – or of an intangible one – i.e., traditions, practices, beliefs, literary or musical compositions –, the cultural heritage has challenged the economists urging them to offer sophisticated tools to assess its value, to make cost-benefit analyses with respect to its preservation, restoration or reuse. The supporters of regulation in the cultural goods market justify it through the fact that the market cannot provide in an efficient manner this type of goods, the solution being national government intervention – i.e., for the regulation and finance of cultural/heritage goods – or even international government regulation, in cases when national states’ failure is encountered. A widespread opinion is that heritage is communal, par excellence, this view implicitly adjusting the acceptation that private property has in the cultural realm. The present paper addresses the reality and the necessity of ownership and movement of heritage goods especially in the international markets, considered as a dangerous vacuum for national cultural treasuries.

Keywords: cultural heritage; property rights; national regulations; international trade; heritage goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.2478/mmcks-2018-0012 (text/html)

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:vrs:manmar:v:13:y:2018:i:2:p:897-912:n:4

DOI: 10.2478/mmcks-2018-0012

Access Statistics for this article

Management & Marketing is currently edited by Alina Mihaela Dima

More articles in Management & Marketing from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().