52 research outputs found
The happy artist? An empirical application of the work-preference model
The artistic labor market is marked by several adversities, such as low wages, above-average unemployment, and constrained underemployment. Nevertheless, it attracts many young people. The number of students exceeds the available jobs by far. A potential explanation for this puzzle is that artistic work might result in exceptionally high job satisfaction, a conjecture that has been mentioned at various times in the literature. We conduct the first direct empirical investigation of artists’ job satisfaction. The analysis is based on panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey (SOEP). Artists on average are found to be considerably more satisfied with their work than non-artists, a finding that corroborates the conjectures in the literature. Differences in income, working hours, and personality cannot account for the observed difference in job satisfaction. Partially, but not fully, the higher job satisfaction can be attributed to the higher self-employment rate among artists. Suggestive evidence is found that superior “procedural” characteristics of artistic work, such as increased variety and on-the-job learning, contribute to the difference in job satisfaction.Job satisfaction, artists, work-preference, cultural economics
Imbalance of World Heritage List: did the UNESCO strategy work?
The official intention of the UNESCO World Heritage List is to protect the global heritage. However, the imbalance of the distribution of Sites according to countries and continents is striking. Consequently, the World Heritage Committee launched the Global Strategy for a Balanced, Representative and Credible World Heritage List in 1994. To date, there have not been any empirical analyses conducted to study the impact of this strategy. This paper shows that the imbalance did not decrease and perhaps increased over time, thus reflecting the inability of the Global Strategy to achieve a more balanced distribution of Sites.UNESCO, international organizations, international political economy, global public goods, world heritage
World Heritage List: Does it Make Sense?
The UNESCO World Heritage List contains the 900 most treasured Sites of humanity’s culture and landscapes. The World Heritage List is beneficial where heritage sites are undetected, disregarded by national decision-makers, not commercially exploitable, and where national financial resources, political control and technical knowledge for conservation are inadequate. Alternatives such as the market and reliance on national conservation list are more beneficial where the cultural and natural sites are already popular, markets work well, and where inclusion in the List does not raise the destruction potential by excessive tourism, and in times of war or by terrorists.global public good, World Heritage, cultural certificates, monuments, UNESCO
Pay as you Go: A New Proposal for Museum Pricing
Museums have many different goals beyond efficiency such as social equity, financial revenue, attracting donors and gaining international, regional or local prestige. Various pricing schemes are being discussed with the aim of reaching these goals. The classical ones are entry prices and free entry. The museum club solution or exit donations allow for various additional goals. Each scheme has clear advantages and disadvantages. We propose an innovative pricing instrument: Exit prices, which are charged according to the time spent in a museum. This scheme has a number of notable advantages, in particular the better choice available to the visitors, which increases their satisfaction.prices, museums, culture, donations, homo oeconomicus
What determines the World Heritage List? An econometric analysis
The official intention of the UNESCO World Heritage List is to protect the global heritage. However, the existing List is highly imbalanced according to countries and continents. Historical reasons, such as historical GDP, population, and number of years of high civilization, have a significant impact on being included on the List. In addition, economic and political factors unrelated to the value of heritage, such as rent seeking by bureaucrats and politicians, the size of the tourist sector, the importance of media, the degree of federalism, and membership in the UN Security Council, influence the composition of the List.Global public goods, world heritage, international organizations, international political economy, culture
The happy artist: an empirical application of the work-preference model
The artistic labor market is marked by several adversities, such as low wages, above-average unemployment, and constrained underemployment. Nevertheless, it attracts many young people. The number of students exceeds the available jobs by far. A potential explanation for this puzzle is that artistic work might result in exceptionally high job satisfaction, a conjecture that has been mentioned at various times in the literature. We conduct the first direct empirical investigation into artists' job satisfaction. The analysis is based on panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Survey. Artists on average are found to be considerably more satisfied with their work than non-artists, a finding that corroborates the conjectures in the literature. Differences in income, working hours, and personality cannot account for the observed difference in job satisfaction. Partially, but not fully, the higher job satisfaction can be attributed to the higher self-employment rate among artists. Suggestive evidence is found that superior "procedural” characteristics of artistic work, such as increased variety and on-the-job learning, contribute to the difference in job satisfactio
What determines the World Heritage List? An econometric analysis
The official intention of the UNESCO World Heritage List is to protect the global heritage. However, the existing List is highly imbalanced according to countries and continents. Historical reasons, such as historical GDP, population, and number of years of high civilization, have a significant impact on being included on the List. In addition, economic and political factors unrelated to the value of heritage, such as rent seeking by bureaucrats and politicians, the size of the tourist sector, the importance of media, the degree of federalism, and membership in the UN Security Council, influence the composition of the List
Exact Matching: Correct Parity and FPT Parameterized by Independence Number
Given an integer and a graph where every edge is colored either red or
blue, the goal of the exact matching problem is to find a perfect matching with
the property that exactly of its edges are red. Soon after Papadimitriou
and Yannakakis (JACM 1982) introduced the problem, a randomized polynomial-time
algorithm solving the problem was described by Mulmuley et al. (Combinatorica
1987). Despite a lot of effort, it is still not known today whether a
deterministic polynomial-time algorithm exists. This makes the exact matching
problem an important candidate to test the popular conjecture that the
complexity classes P and RP are equal. In a recent article (MFCS 2022),
progress was made towards this goal by showing that for bipartite graphs of
bounded bipartite independence number, a polynomial time algorithm exists. In
terms of parameterized complexity, this algorithm was an XP-algorithm
parameterized by the bipartite independence number. In this article, we
introduce novel algorithmic techniques that allow us to obtain an
FPT-algorithm. If the input is a general graph we show that one can at least
compute a perfect matching which has the correct number of red edges modulo
2, in polynomial time. This is motivated by our last result, in which we prove
that an FPT algorithm for general graphs, parameterized by the independence
number, reduces to the problem of finding in polynomial time a perfect matching
with at most red edges and the correct number of red edges modulo 2
Home Is Where Your Art Is: The Home Bias of Art Collectors
Abstract This paper analysis the global distribution of art collections and collectors´ biases with respect to the origin of artworks. Employing a unique dataset we find that the greates
Open issues in happiness research
Happiness research is one of the most vivid and fruitful parts of modern economics. The focus is on empirical findings. In contrast, theoretical work has been rather neglected. The paper deals with three areas needing more analytical work: the choice or imposition of comparison or reference groups; and the extent, speed and symmetry of adaptation to positive and negative shocks on happiness. In both areas, theoretical propositions are derived which can in the future be empirically tested. The third area relates to the political economy of happiness. Many governments intend to take the happiness index as a criterion of how successful their policies are. As a consequence, survey respondents get an incentive to misrepresent their happiness level, and governments to manipulate the aggregate happiness indicator in their favor. A country's constitution must induce governments to carefully observe human rights, democracy, the decentralization of political decision making, and market institutions and provide people with the possibility to acquire a good education and find a suitable job
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