Tourism flows and the demand for regional and city theatres in Austria

This paper investigates the impact of tourism flows on demand for large regional and city theatres in Austria over the period from 1972 to 2011 (39 years). The results are obtained by applying an aggregated theatre demand function for both residents and tourists. The elasticity of theatre attendance in response to tourism is estimated along with other standard demand variables such as ticket price and income. The quality factors and theatre-specific effects are also included. The tourism flows variables are derived using detailed data set on tourist arrivals and their overnight counts, and they are also split between domestic and foreign tourists. To measure the impact of tourism flows on theatre demand, three alternative theatre markets specifications are considered. The total elasticity of attendance per capita in response to tourism is estimated between 15 and 20 %, indicating that increasing the number of arrivals by two tourists per resident in the relevant market would generate an increase in theatre attendance by 581-680 thousand visitors per year. The role of tourism flows is found to be particularly important for attendance at opera, operetta and musicals as opposed to attendance at drama performances. The analysis also reveals that foreign, non-German tourists have a positive impact on theatre attendance, whereas domestic tourists do not contribute significantly to higher demand for Austrian theatres

Cultural participation of tourists - evidence from travel habits of Austrian residents

This paper examines how the individual characteristics of tourists and the attributes of a trip affect the decision that those visitors would choose cultural participation as their primary travel reason. In particular, we examine the effect of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of tourists, and of the attributes of their trip, on both the likelihood and the frequency of their cultural participation. The data was gathered based on a national telephone survey in Austria, known as Travel Habits of Austrian Residents which has been conducted over the years 2008 and 2009. Using observations of 8587 respondents and their 14,646 trips, a series of logistic and negative binomial regressions were employed. The findings of this study have practical implications for cultural managers both in Austria and in global markets. Although tourism is often promoted as a way to escape from everyday routines, the actual choice of cultural consumption in the tourism arena appears to be dictated by individual characteristics of tourists. Nevertheless, factors related to the character of a trip are also significant in determining cultural participation of tourists

Well-being and unemployment during the great recession: an empirical analysis across UK local authority districts

This paper examines the relationship between unemployment and psychological well-being before and during the Great Recession across 249 UK local authority districts (LADs). Substantial evidence demonstrates that unemployment has a large negative effect on psychological well-being. However, unique social norms develop in geographical areas with high unemployment rates, which significantly reduce the negative impact of unemployment on well-being. Though the post-2007 Great Recession period was characterized by widespread unemployment, few studies have examined the impact of this crisis on well-being in high- and low-unemployment local areas. The analysis constructs a rich panel data set which follows 15,798 individuals from 1998 to 2014, and applies difference-in-differences fixed effects and general method of moments estimators. The findings indicate that unemployment had a large negative impact on psychological well-being. However, the magnitude of this effect did not change (or was even slightly lower) during the Great Recession. Furthermore, the unemployment social norm also ceased to have any additional effect on well-being during the Great Recession in high-unemployment LADs, as opposed to the pre-recession period

Technical and scale efficiency in Irish public Higher Education Institutions: A bootstrap and conditional DEA approach

This article evaluates both technical efficiency (TE) and scale efficiency (SE) of 16 Irish public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) over the period 2015-2020. The external efficiency factors such as state grants, type of HEIs, location, age and quality are also evaluated. The relatively small data sample of public HEIs in Ireland requires application of a non-parametric DEA. Though, this research applies its modern extensions such as homogenous-bootstrap (HB) and double-bootstrap (DB), as well as conditional DEA approaches. The findings of this research suggest that both traditional and bootstrapping DEA models underestimate TEs and SEs of HEIs compared to the conditional order-m DEA approach. The average TE for all HEIs is between 83 and 89%, while TE scores also increased over time and HEIs are 100% technically efficient under our preferred conditional order-m DEA. However, HEIs are scale inefficient further inferring that higher productivity of HEIs could be achieved through improving their SE rather than pure TE. Nonetheless, both DB DEA and conditional order-m DEA results provide comparable and therefore robust findings with regard to the estimated effects of external factors on TE scores. Importantly, we find that the larger universities in Ireland are more technically efficient than the smaller Institutes of Technology. We also find that underfunding of Irish universities leads to a greater trade-off between their efficiency levels and quality, as measured by international university ratings, while HEIs located in regions with lower GDP should be supported more. Within this context some policy implications are discussed.</p

Public support for performing arts efficiency and productivity gains in eleven European countries

This paper investigates the importance of public cultural expenditure for the efficiency and productivity of the performing arts (PA) firms. To this aim, we estimate a translog production  function using the stochastic frontier approach (SFA), and we obtain the estimates of both  technical efficiency and its determinants for the PA firms in EU-11 countries over the period 2009-2017. The large panel data set enables the application of robust true random-effects SFA techniques, which control for noise, unobserved firms’ heterogeneity and endogeneity of  the inputs. Moreover, by estimating a production function, the characteristics of the  production technology in the PA sector is also derived. The empirical results demonstrate that PA firms are technically inefficient, implying that the investigated firms could increase their artistic output between 32 and 42 percent and that decreasing returns to scale are prevalent,  due to the presence of too many micro and large-scale firms in the European PA sectors. In  contrast to the seminal Baumol and Bowen’s (1965) paper, we also demonstrate that the total  factor productivity (TFP) increased in the EU PA firms over the examined period. Technical efficiency, although relatively low, was the main driver of this productivity growth, as opposed to scale efficiency change or technological change, which display very small or no increases. We also find that, contrary to the common wisdom on its negative effects on firm efficiency, public spending on culture increases the efficiency of PA firms. Within this  context some policy implications are discussed </p

Technical and scale efficiency in public and private Irish nursing homes a bootstrap DEA approach

This article provides methodological and empirical insights into the estimation of technical efficiency in the nursing home sector.  Focusing on long-stay care and using primary data, we examine technical and scale efficiency in 39 public and 73 private Irish nursing homes by applying an input-oriented data envelopment analysis (DEA).  We employ robust bootstrap methods to validate our nonparametric DEA scores and to integrate the effects of potential determinants in estimating the efficiencies.  Both the homogenous and two-stage double bootstrap procedures are used to obtain confidence intervals for the bias-corrected DEA scores.  Importantly, the application of the double bootstrap approach affords true DEA technical efficiency scores after adjusting for the effects of ownership, size, case-mix, and other determinants such as location, and quality.  Based on our DEA results for variable returns to scale technology, the average technical efficiency score is 62%, and the mean scale efficiency is 88%, with nearly all units operating on the increasing returns to scale part of the production frontier.  Moreover, based on the double bootstrap results, Irish nursing homes are less technically efficient, and more scale efficient than the conventional DEA estimates suggest.  Regarding the efficiency determinants, in terms of ownership, we find that private facilities are less efficient than the public units.  Furthermore, the size of the nursing home has a positive effect, and this reinforces our finding that Irish homes produce at increasing returns to scale.  Also, notably, we find that a tendency towards quality improvements can lead to poorer technical efficiency performance