The Artful Economist

This book reassesses central topics in cultural economics: Public finance and public choice theory as the basis for decision-making in cultural and media policy, the role of welfare economics in cultural policy, the economics of creative industries, the application of empirical testing to the performing arts and the economics of cultural heritage. Cultural economics has made enormous progress over the last 50 years, to which Alan Peacock made an important contribution. The volume brings together many of the senior figures, whose contributions to the various special fields of cultural economics have been instrumental in the development of the subject, and others reflecting on the subject's progress and assessing its future direction. 

Ilde Rizzo, Ph.D, is Professor of Public Finance at the University of Catania and former director of the Postgraduate Master on the Economics of Cultural Sector held by the Scuola Superiore of the University of Catania. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Buckingham, UK. She has published in many fields of public finance (Cultural economics, Performance measurement, Economics of Procurement, Health Economics)  monographs and edited books, authoring also many refereed articles in professional journals and several other papers. Ilde has also coordinated national and international research projects in the field of cultural heritage. She is President elect of the Association for Cultural Economics International. She has given lectures, seminars and conference papers in many countries and  has been consultant to national and international organisations.

Ruth Towse is Professor of Economics of Creative Industries at the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management, Bournemouth University and CREATE Fellow in Cultural Economics (University of Glasgow). She specialises in cultural economics and the economics of copyright. She has published widely in both fields in academic journals and books and has also edited several collections of papers and original contributions. Ruth has been Joint Editor of the Journal of Cultural Economics, President of the Association for Cultural Economics International, and President of the Society for Economic Research in Copyright Issues and serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals. She has lectured and given seminars, conference papers and presentations to a wide range of organisations in many countries and has been consultant on cultural economics and the economics of copyright to a number of national and international governmental organisations.