Creative Australia: the arts and culture in Australian work and leisure

This paper addresses three aspects of creativity in Australian society: • Creative work: Significant numbers of people work in jobs that involve the exercise of creative skills. Is it possible to identify a creative workforce and to assess its contribution to the Australian economy? And are these workers employed in sectors of the economy that could be thought of as the creative industries? • Creative class: A lot of attention has been focused recently on the proposition that creative people tend to cluster in particular urban environments, stimulating economic growth and social interaction. Such people have been referred to as a ‘creative class’. Does this concept have any relevance to cities in Australia? And can we describe any of the State or Territory capitals as a ‘creative city’? • Creative participation: Australians spend their leisure time in a variety of ways, many of which could be referred to as creative. Active involvement in the arts, through painting, singing, playing a musical instrument, writing, dancing and so on all involve the development and application of creative skills. Moreover, participation in the arts as a consumer – visiting art galleries, reading novels, going to the theatre – all involve a form of creative engagement. This is the first in a series of essays based on data from the 2006 Census, produced in cooperation with the Australian Bureau of Statistics

Measuring the Economic and Cultural Values of Historic Heritage Places

This research project on the valuation of cultural heritage is developing a methodology for a quantitative valuation study of the use and non-use values of historic heritage places. The methodology developed in this project will provide a template for subsequent empirical applications to generate data of use in the formulation of heritage policies and programs. The initial stages in reaching this larger objective have involved determining how historic heritage places are to be categorised for measurement, establishing the process by which heritage attributes will be determined for valuation, and developing and trialling an effective measurement framework. The principal techniques being developed for valuation assessment in the project are derived from choice-modelling (CM) and contingent-valuation methods (CVM). A particular focus of the project is on the systematic integration of cultural and economic value assessments within a consistent theoretical framework, reflecting the need for an economic perspective on the significance criteria currently in use in heritage policy in Australia.Community/Rural/Urban Development, Environmental Economics and Policy,

论文化资本

在经济学中，我们习惯于区分三种形式的资本。[ 不考虑金融资本，即以各种形式持有的金融资产，既然它与我们目前所关注的无关。]首先是物质资本，它意味着真实商品的存量，如工厂、机器、楼房等，可以用来生产进一步的商品。在经济学刚刚起步时人们就知道了物质资本，并对它进行了讨论（Hicks，1974）。接下来，第二类资本——人力资本——得到了确认，这是出于这么一种认识，即：人身上所体现出来的技术和经验代表了一种资本存量，这种资本存量完完全全与一个国家经济生产中的物质资本一样重要。再接下来，伴随着对经济活动带来的环境问题影响的越来越多的关注，经济学家逐渐接受了自然资本现象，这种资本指的是由自然提供的可更新与不可更新的资源存量，并包括调节它们的存在和使用的生态过程（Jansson et al.，1994）。尽管把自然看作服务的一个提供者的思想可以追溯到古典政治经济学家（对于马歇尔和新古典经济学家也是重要的）把土地作为一种生产要素的兴趣（El Serafy，1991），但是，对于资本及其在“可持续性”中的作用所做的分析则是最近才进行的，“可持续性”则是方兴未艾的生态经济学的核心（Costanza et al, 1991）。译者单位：中国科学院数学与系统科学研究院(100001

Public preferences for heritage conservation strategies: a choice modelling approach

Studies aiming at valuing cultural and natural heritage projects are often focussed on one or only a few sites, whereas planning decisions concerning the allocation of public funds to heritage conservation deal with classes of heritage rather than single sites. In addition, such planning decisions are almost always concerned with non-monetary values that need to be incorporated into assessment procedures if the total value of alternative strategies is to be estimated. In this paper, we put forward and estimate models to address both of these issues within a choice-modelling frame-work. The method is developed in the context of conservation of a particular class of cultural heritage, namely major historic buildings in a city or country. We report results from a discrete choice experiment to assess public preferences in which the choices are alternative conservation programs and the attributes are dimensions of the programs’ cultural and economic value. The model is estimated from survey data using several flexible econometric specifications. We show that the methods developed can be used to obtain robust estimates of the economic value of this category of buildings. We also find a significant contribution of all aspects of cultural value to the formation of conservation preferences and the public’s willingness to pay

Cultural corridors: An analysis of persistence in impacts on local development — A neo-Weberian perspective on South-East Europe

Culture matters for economic development. This postulate has been a main conceptual concern for “old” institutional economics (OIE) and has lately also been tested through neoclassically inspired econometric techniques. This conceptual foundation has been confirmed in several quantitative studies on developed countries, in particular cases from the USA, Germany, and Italy. In less developed regions with a wealth of cultural heritage, particularly in South-East Europe, this postulate is still an underexplored issue from the perspective of advanced econometric approaches. Our goal is to examine the impact of the so-called South-East European cultural corridors on welfare — and especially on total employment — at the local or regional level. Accounting for gross value added and sectoral specialization, we examine the effect of such corridors by considering the distance to a cultural corridor: namely, the East Trans-Balkan Road (crossing Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece) as an explanatory factor for regional development, particularly employment. Using the European University Institute (EUI) European Regional Dataset (ERD), as well as the geo-data from the Cultural Corridors of the South-East Europe website, we estimate a regression model using a 2SLS instrumental variable (IV) approach, with a pooled dataset at the NUTS 3 level (Eurostat) from 1980 to 2011. We then triangulate the results by using the distance to the cultural corridor concerned as a treatment effect in a propensity-score-matching and difference-in-differences exploratory analysis. The findings confirm the importance of distance to the cultural corridor under investigation as a strong predictor for local socio-economic development. The results further suggest that the slow evolution of culture over time is likely to lead to the gradual emergence of new geographical cultural centers and a new cultural path-dependence build-up of persistence chains

Seasonal Influenza Vaccine and Protection against Pandemic (H1N1) 2009-Associated Illness among US Military Personnel

INTRODUCTION: A novel A/H1N1 virus is the cause of the present influenza pandemic; vaccination is a key countermeasure, however, few data assessing prior seasonal vaccine effectiveness (VE) against the pandemic strain of H1N1 (pH1N1) virus are available. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Surveillance of influenza-related medical encounter data of active duty military service members stationed in the United States during the period of April-October 2009 with comparison of pH1N1-confirmed cases and location and date-matched controls. Crude odds ratios (OR) and VE estimates for immunized versus non-immunized were calculated as well as adjusted OR (AOR) controlling for sex, age group, and history of prior influenza vaccination. Separate stratified VE analyses by vaccine type (trivalent inactivated [TIV] or live attenuated [LAIV]), age groups and hospitalization status were also performed. For the period of April 20 to October 15, 2009, a total of 1,205 cases of pH1N1-confirmed cases were reported, 966 (80%) among males and over one-half (58%) under 25 years of age. Overall VE for service members was found to be 45% (95% CI, 33 to 55%). Immunization with prior season's TIV (VE = 44%, 95% CI, 32 to 54%) as well as LAIV (VE = 24%, 95% CI, 6 to 38%) were both found to be associated with protection. Of significance, VE against a severe disease outcome was higher (VE = 62%, 95% CI, 14 to 84%) than against milder outcomes (VE = 42%, 95% CI, 29 to 53%). CONCLUSION: A moderate association with protection against clinically apparent, laboratory-confirmed Pandemic (H1N1) 2009-associated illness was found for immunization with either TIV or LAIV 2008-09 seasonal influenza vaccines. This association with protection was found to be especially apparent for severe disease as compared to milder outcome, as well as in the youngest and older populations. Prior vaccination with seasonal influenza vaccines in 2004-08 was also independently associated with protection

Comparison of Antibody Repertoires Produced by HIV-1 Infection, Other Chronic and Acute Infections, and Systemic Autoimmune Disease

Background Antibodies (Abs) produced during HIV-1 infection rarely neutralize a broad range of viral isolates; only eight broadly-neutralizing (bNt) monoclonal (M)Abs have been isolated. Yet, to be effective, an HIV-1 vaccine may have to elicit the essential features of these MAbs. The V genes of all of these bNt MAbs are highly somatically mutated, and the VH genes of five of them encode a long (≥20 aa) third complementarity-determining region (CDR-H3). This led us to question whether long CDR-H3s and high levels of somatic mutation (SM) are a preferred feature of anti-HIV bNt MAbs, or if other adaptive immune responses elicit them in general. Methodology and Principal Findings We assembled a VH-gene sequence database from over 700 human MAbs of known antigen specificity isolated from chronic (viral) infections (ChI), acute (bacterial and viral) infections (AcI), and systemic autoimmune diseases (SAD), and compared their CDR-H3 length, number of SMs and germline VH-gene usage. We found that anti-HIV Abs, regardless of their neutralization breadth, tended to have long CDR-H3s and high numbers of SMs. However, these features were also common among Abs associated with other chronic viral infections. In contrast, Abs from acute viral infections (but not bacterial infections) tended to have relatively short CDR-H3s and a low number of SMs, whereas SAD Abs were generally intermediate in CDR-H3 length and number of SMs. Analysis of VH gene usage showed that ChI Abs also tended to favor distal germline VH-genes (particularly VH1-69), especially in Abs bearing long CDR-H3s. Conclusions and Significance The striking difference between the Abs produced during chronic vs. acute viral infection suggests that Abs bearing long CDR-H3s, high levels of SM and VH1-69 gene usage may be preferentially selected during persistent infection