La Bohème? Labour Market Outcomes Among Artists in Europe and the Effects of Cultural Policy

Ioannis Laliotis and Christos A. Makridis

No 12699, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We study the labour market position of artists across Europe and examine how public cultural spending is related to their outcomes. Using EU-LFS micro-data for 2009-2023, we compare artists with non-artists using harmonised measures of wage rank, employment, and non-standard work. In the most fully controlled specifications, artists rank substantially lower in the wage distribution: the estimated penalty is about 0.45 wage deciles relative to other salaried workers and 0.26 deciles relative to other professionals. Arts graduates are more exposed to part-time work and temporary contracts, while current artists are more likely to hold multiple jobs. These differences appear across many ages and countries. We then link individual outcomes to country-year real per capita public expenditure on cultural services. Higher cultural spending is associated with a higher probability of employment among labour-force participants and a lower incidence of part-time work, but these associations are not systematically more favorable for artists or respondents with an arts field of study. The only consistent differential correlation is greater multiple job holding among respondents with an arts field of study in higher-spending environments. The estimates provide little evidence of the improvements predicted by a simple high-pass-through case, but do not distinguish among limited pass-through, additional entry, crowd-out of private support, or other mechanisms.

Keywords: artists; cultural employment; public cultural expenditure; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 J31 J44 J68 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-eur and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp12699.pdf (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:ces:ceswps:_12699

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().