The target is mostly intended to be sports venues and airports, and I'm not sure anyone has thought through the impact on more mission-driven endeavors.
As a non-sports-fan, I agree that beer prices at stadiums are wild. The reaction has been split between economists and pundits who say "this will make sports ticket prices higher" and those who say "the sports teams are already pricing tickets as high as they can, if they could increase prices, they would!" My sense is that both views are simplistic, but that such a policy might be sound if any negative impact on arts groups could be minimized.
Wishing you a speedy recovery, and thank you for your invitation.
I have been giving an introductory course in cultural economics to students aged 23-24 for several years. Unfortunately, I find that cultural economics textbooks (in French and in English) are not very good to interest students who are focussing on a career in the field of arts and culture. The beginning of my course is about cost disease in the performing arts and the existence of stars and superstars. The advantage is that we have for these two subjects solid theoretical models that are quite simple to explain (Baumol and Bowen, Rosen, Adler, and MacDonald), but that's all! The rest of my course deals with the economic functions of copyright, the digital revolution (pricing, piracy, platforms, streaming…) and the economic impact of a cultural activity but I would like to have other simple theoretical models at my disposal. What we find in the textbooks is very descriptive and quite often superficial, which is quickly boring... However, I always try to offer course chapters for which economic analysis brings a real understanding of a phenomenon, based on explicit assumptions which are combined in a simple theoretical model.
Do you know any really good textbooks that allow you to build an introductory course with a diversity of relatively untechnical theoretical models that are really interesting, really instructive, really helpful to understand cultural behaviours? For example, I think that a course chapter on the sale and the resale of concert tickets could really be interesting, based on empirical elements and a simple theoretical model at first and then complicated to illustrate the diversity of observable behaviours. But no textbook offers this.
Another subject would be to explain why cultural industries (music, books, films...) are made up of oligopolies (major companies) with a competitive fringe of small firms. Where is, in a introductory textbook, the simple theoretical model to distinguish and combine the three or four explanatory factors of this phenomenon?
Hello again Yann. I have thought about your question - the best book that comes to mind, and from which I used to teach, was Richard Caves' Creative Industries (2000). Although for the most part pre-internet / pre-streaming, it holds up very well: it gives the basics of the superstar model and cost disease and all that, but much more, across genres, on what sectors have in common: the importance of gatekeepers (which has persisted into the internet era even though some predicted they would fade away), and the use through the arts of the option contract, a solution to the problems of radical uncertainty in the development of projects and in audience reception.
I would be really curious to hear your thoughts on the recent "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education" that the Trump Dept. of Ed asked nine US universities to sign.
There are numerous US "culture-war" issues embedded in the compact, and how we teach students has a broader impact on US cultural policy. I am interested (concerned) about the compact's potential cultural/economic impact, why those universities in particular, where we might be headed, etc.
Quite some time ago you posted a reading list from one of your courses at IU, and I can't seem to locate it. The sources you offer in your blog posts tend to find their way onto my bookshelf, so I hope you will consider re-posting.
Second question: The Canada Council for the Arts has just recently (after a Literature Review from 2023 calling for more research into the issue) added sexual minorities to the list of priority groups for funding. I wonder if you could write about priority groups in general, and if you consider this adjudication strategy to be beneficial, destabilizing, or perhaps both in different ways. Thanks for your work!
I can answer your first question more quickly: I think this is the reading list you meant. I only taught the course once (it was my last semester before retiring), and in retrospect I would make some changes, but I really enjoyed doing this, the students gave me a lot of hope.
Something on the economics of Substack. I don’t really get it. They seem pretty expensive and usually they are repetitive and need an editor, present company excluded of course. At $70 dollars a year I can get a subscription to the New Yorker or other magazines with diverse content, professional editing etc. I used to subscribe to slow boring, honest broker, even Freddie de Boer for a while but did not seem like good value. Am I missing something.
I take us back to days of yore, pre-internet / pre-streaming services, when the technology that people used to complain about was cable television. People would ask "why do cable providers insist on selling me these huge bundles of channels when I only ever watch a handful of them? Why can't I just pay for the ones I want?" Anyway, economic analysis showed that consumer surplus actually ended up higher with these bundles than the outcome would be with a la carte pricing. And as such we see lots of bundles: magazines and newspapers, music streaming, video streaming and the like. Indeed, a persistent complaint about video streaming now is that larger bundles would be better. So, with Substack, we have something going against the grain.
Why not adopt the Spotify model: you pay a monthly fee for the whole of Substack, read whatever you want, and writers are paid according to their share of the total number of reads?
Well, musicians do complain about Spotify, though a surprisingly big number do well out of it.
I think the big difference, the thing that *for now* Substack avoids, is clickbait. Writers win subscribers not through flashy headlines, but for consistently providing posts that are good reads. Are we at equilibrium prices? I'm not sure - I really don't know what demand curves look like in this place (good thesis topic!). My own budgeting is that I will spend a total amount on Substack, and allocate it where I think there is most value. I post for free because I don't want the pressure of expectations for regular, quality posts.
I'd be interested in knowing if you have a reaction to this policy brief: https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-URL/wp-content/uploads/sites/412/2025/10/30185122/Price-Gouging-Captive-Customers.pdf which would limit the ability to mark up food and beverage prices at entertainment venues. Would it have an impact on ticket pricing?
The target is mostly intended to be sports venues and airports, and I'm not sure anyone has thought through the impact on more mission-driven endeavors.
As a non-sports-fan, I agree that beer prices at stadiums are wild. The reaction has been split between economists and pundits who say "this will make sports ticket prices higher" and those who say "the sports teams are already pricing tickets as high as they can, if they could increase prices, they would!" My sense is that both views are simplistic, but that such a policy might be sound if any negative impact on arts groups could be minimized.
I will write up a reply!
Wishing you a speedy recovery, and thank you for your invitation.
I have been giving an introductory course in cultural economics to students aged 23-24 for several years. Unfortunately, I find that cultural economics textbooks (in French and in English) are not very good to interest students who are focussing on a career in the field of arts and culture. The beginning of my course is about cost disease in the performing arts and the existence of stars and superstars. The advantage is that we have for these two subjects solid theoretical models that are quite simple to explain (Baumol and Bowen, Rosen, Adler, and MacDonald), but that's all! The rest of my course deals with the economic functions of copyright, the digital revolution (pricing, piracy, platforms, streaming…) and the economic impact of a cultural activity but I would like to have other simple theoretical models at my disposal. What we find in the textbooks is very descriptive and quite often superficial, which is quickly boring... However, I always try to offer course chapters for which economic analysis brings a real understanding of a phenomenon, based on explicit assumptions which are combined in a simple theoretical model.
Do you know any really good textbooks that allow you to build an introductory course with a diversity of relatively untechnical theoretical models that are really interesting, really instructive, really helpful to understand cultural behaviours? For example, I think that a course chapter on the sale and the resale of concert tickets could really be interesting, based on empirical elements and a simple theoretical model at first and then complicated to illustrate the diversity of observable behaviours. But no textbook offers this.
Another subject would be to explain why cultural industries (music, books, films...) are made up of oligopolies (major companies) with a competitive fringe of small firms. Where is, in a introductory textbook, the simple theoretical model to distinguish and combine the three or four explanatory factors of this phenomenon?
Thanks for your posts.
Yann, from France
Hello again Yann. I have thought about your question - the best book that comes to mind, and from which I used to teach, was Richard Caves' Creative Industries (2000). Although for the most part pre-internet / pre-streaming, it holds up very well: it gives the basics of the superstar model and cost disease and all that, but much more, across genres, on what sectors have in common: the importance of gatekeepers (which has persisted into the internet era even though some predicted they would fade away), and the use through the arts of the option contract, a solution to the problems of radical uncertainty in the development of projects and in audience reception.
Excellent question - I will search for ideas (and I agree that there is room for a new book here)
Rest well, Dr. Rushton!
I would be really curious to hear your thoughts on the recent "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education" that the Trump Dept. of Ed asked nine US universities to sign.
There are numerous US "culture-war" issues embedded in the compact, and how we teach students has a broader impact on US cultural policy. I am interested (concerned) about the compact's potential cultural/economic impact, why those universities in particular, where we might be headed, etc.
Thank you Alex. Excellent question!
Wishing you a speedy recovery!
Quite some time ago you posted a reading list from one of your courses at IU, and I can't seem to locate it. The sources you offer in your blog posts tend to find their way onto my bookshelf, so I hope you will consider re-posting.
Second question: The Canada Council for the Arts has just recently (after a Literature Review from 2023 calling for more research into the issue) added sexual minorities to the list of priority groups for funding. I wonder if you could write about priority groups in general, and if you consider this adjudication strategy to be beneficial, destabilizing, or perhaps both in different ways. Thanks for your work!
I can answer your first question more quickly: I think this is the reading list you meant. I only taught the course once (it was my last semester before retiring), and in retrospect I would make some changes, but I really enjoyed doing this, the students gave me a lot of hope.
https://michaelrushton.substack.com/p/ideas-and-experience-1750-1950
Thanks very much!
Thank you Bud, I will give this a try!
Something on the economics of Substack. I don’t really get it. They seem pretty expensive and usually they are repetitive and need an editor, present company excluded of course. At $70 dollars a year I can get a subscription to the New Yorker or other magazines with diverse content, professional editing etc. I used to subscribe to slow boring, honest broker, even Freddie de Boer for a while but did not seem like good value. Am I missing something.
Alright - now that I am getting back to this...
I take us back to days of yore, pre-internet / pre-streaming services, when the technology that people used to complain about was cable television. People would ask "why do cable providers insist on selling me these huge bundles of channels when I only ever watch a handful of them? Why can't I just pay for the ones I want?" Anyway, economic analysis showed that consumer surplus actually ended up higher with these bundles than the outcome would be with a la carte pricing. And as such we see lots of bundles: magazines and newspapers, music streaming, video streaming and the like. Indeed, a persistent complaint about video streaming now is that larger bundles would be better. So, with Substack, we have something going against the grain.
Why not adopt the Spotify model: you pay a monthly fee for the whole of Substack, read whatever you want, and writers are paid according to their share of the total number of reads?
Well, musicians do complain about Spotify, though a surprisingly big number do well out of it.
I think the big difference, the thing that *for now* Substack avoids, is clickbait. Writers win subscribers not through flashy headlines, but for consistently providing posts that are good reads. Are we at equilibrium prices? I'm not sure - I really don't know what demand curves look like in this place (good thesis topic!). My own budgeting is that I will spend a total amount on Substack, and allocate it where I think there is most value. I post for free because I don't want the pressure of expectations for regular, quality posts.
Having been at this place for a few years now, I’ll have a go at this
Best wishes with the surgery, may you heal swiftly.
Thank you Franklin.