Economic estimation of the value of culture

Andrej Srakar, Lecture at Out of the Box Seminar, University of Maribor, 2013 "In the seminar, two main questions will be addressed - firstly, methods to estimate economic effects of cultural events, which appear an extremely important and relevant topic in time of economic crisis and austerity measures, and yet, a decision of a proper method remains unresolved and open; all existing methods have been subject to severe criticisms in past years. We will therefore address the question by presenting a possibility of a new method, based on econometric analysis of secondary statistical data -- a method being developed for purposes of estimation of economic effects of European Capital of Culture Maribor 2012. Secondly, the question of the value of culture will be addressed. In cultural economics, value of culture usually consists of three components: economic use value, economic non-use values and cultural values. We will specifically address the non-use values, and will present results of a pioneering economic modeling experiment, done during author's past research in USA, which shows that non-use values can be appropriately labeled as »public values«, being able to valorize public-good dimensions of cultural events."