Karol Jan Borowiecki

Cultural Participation and Tourism Flows. An Empirical Investigation of Italian Provinces

The importance of cultural events for attracting tourism has often been posited in research, but rarely tested in relation to non-cultural activities. This paper investigates the association between participation in entertainment activities and tourism flows in Italian provinces, and finds that admission to theatre-type activities increases as the number of domestic tourists rises, whereas admission to museums or concerts rises with an increase in foreign tourists. Admissions to exhibitions and shows demonstrate a positive association with both domestic and international tourists, while non-cultural activities remain statistically insignificant. The results provide empirical support for the existence of a strong relationship between tourism flows and cultural participation. The findings also imply that the demand for entertainment varies depending on the origin of the tourist.

Birth Location, Migration and Clustering of Important Composers: Historical Patterns

Abstract This article examines the 522 most important composers in the last 800 years, as identified by Charles Murray (2003), in terms of their birth location and migration. It also examines detailed patterns of migration and tendencies to cluster in certain cities for those composers born between 1750 and 1899. This information is compiled from the large, Grove Music Online (2009) encyclopedia. There is also some discussion of the biases evident in choosing “significant” composers. The data show a marked level of migration of important composers going back many centuries suggesting that the phenomenon of globalization had impacted on composers many centuries before its effects were more widespread. The data also show a marked level of clustering in certain cities.

Cultural Heritage in a Changing World

The central purpose of this collection of essays is to make a creative addition to the debates surrounding the cultural heritage domain. In the 21st century the world faces epochal changes which affect every part of society, including the arenas in which cultural heritage is made, held, collected, curated, exhibited, or simply exists. The book is about these changes; about the decentring of culture and cultural heritage away from institutional structures towards the individual; about the questions which the advent of digital technologies is demanding that we ask and answer in relation to how we understand, collect and make available Europes cultural heritage. Cultural heritage has enormous potential in terms of its contribution to improving the quality of life for people, understanding the past, assisting territorial cohesion, driving economic growth, opening up employment opportunities and supporting wider developments such as improvements in education and in artistic careers. Given that spectrum of possible benefits to society, the range of studies that follow here are intended to be a resource and stimulus to help inform not just professionals in the sector but all those with an interest in cultural heritage.

Changes in cultural consumption: ethnographic collections in Wikipedia

ABSTRACT Visits to museums have been studied as hedonic and utilitarian forms of cultural consumption, though limited attention has been given to the access of museum collections online. We perform a unique historic analysis of the visibility of collections in a museum of ethnographic collections and compare 100 years of onsite visits to 5 years online visits. We find two main results: first, access to collections increased substantially online. From a selection of objects available both onsite and online, access grew from an average of 156,000 onsite visits per year to over 1.5 million views online per year. Onsite, the museum received 15.5 million visits in a span of a century while online, collections were viewed 7.9 million times in only the last 5 years. Second, we find a difference in consumer preference for type of object, favouring 3D onsite and 2D online (photographs of objects, particularly when showing them being used). Results support understanding of online heritage consumption and emerging dynamics, particularly outside of an institutional environment, such as Wikipedia.

A Leverage-Based Measure of Financial Instability

We employ a model of leverage-induced explosive behavior in financial markets to develop a measure of financial market instability. Specifically, we derive a quantitative condition for how large levered investors can become relative to the whole market before the demand curve for securities suddenly becomes upward-sloping and small price declines cascade as levered investors are forced to liquidate. The size and leverage of all levered investors and the elasticity of demand of unlevered investors define the minimum market size for stability (or MinMaSS), the smallest market size that can support a given group of levered investors. The ratio of actual market size to MinMaSS is termed the instability ratio, and can give regulators and policymakers advance warning of financial crises. We apply the instability ratio in an investigation of the 1998 demise of the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management. We find that a forced liquidation of the fund threatened to destabilize some financial markets, particularly for bank funding and equity volatility.

The Cultural Value and Variety of Playing Video Games

This paper compares different profiles of video game players and studies how these groups differ in their cultural consumptions patterns. By using a unique dataset on cultural participation in Denmark, we address the problem of over-aggregation and differentiate between several profiles of video gamers based on the genre they play. We find that video gamers are far from being unresponsive to other forms of cultural consumption. In fact, they rather exhibit, on average, better cultural habits than non-players. In particular, they have higher frequencies of reading, museum and performing arts attendance, and are more likely to be involved in active music participation. The exception exists for the category of reflex game players; this could be driven by age effects, since reflex games are the most popular among (males) under 40.

May I have this Dance? Dance Participation and Attendance in Denmark

ABSTRACT Although dancing is considered to be an important arts form, and is associated with various positive externalities, our understanding of the profiles of dancers and dance audiences are limited. We address the gap in the literature by exploiting survey data on cultural preferences and habits in Denmark for 2004. Our approach has allowed us to identify the socio-economic background of dancers, as well as their involvement in other cultural activities. Among other factors, we note that dancers are more frequent attendees at dance performances, than non-dancers; that they have typically lower incomes and tend to read more, play more video games and visit art exhibits more often. We are further able to separate the sample of dancers in relation to various types of dance practised, allowing us to provide insights on the differences between them.

The Drivers of Long-run CO2 Emissions: A Global Perspective since 1800

Fossil-fuel-related carbon dioxide emissions have risen dramatically since 1800. We identify the long-run drivers of CO2 emissions for a sample of twelve developed economies using an extended Kaya decomposition. By considering biomass and carbon-free energy sources along with fossil fuels we are able to shed light on the effects of past and present energy transitions on CO2 emissions. We find that at low levels of income per capita, fuel switching from biomass to fossil fuels is the main contributing factor to emission growth. Scale effects, especially income effects, become the most important emission drivers at higher levels of income and also dominate the overall long-run change. Technological change is the main offsetting factor. Particularly in the last decades, technological change and fuel switching have become important contributors to the decrease in emissions in Europe. Our results also individualize the different CO2 historical paths across parts of Europe, North America and Japan.