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"Cowen, Tyler"
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Good & plenty : the creative successes of American arts funding
\"In this book, Tyler Cowen argues why the U.S. way of funding the arts, while largely indirect, results not in the terrible and the small but in Good and Plenty - and how it could result in even more and better.\" \"Few would deny that America produces and consumes art of a quantity and quality comparable to that of any country. But is this despite or because of America's meager direct funding of the arts relative to European countries? Overturning the conventional wisdom of this question, Cowen argues that American art thrives through an ingenious combination of small direct subsidies and immense indirect subsidies such as copyright law and tax policies that encourage nonprofits and charitable giving. This decentralized and even somewhat accidental - but decidedly not laissez-faire - system results in arts that are arguably more creative, diverse, abundant, and politically unencumbered than that of Europe. Good and Plenty is essential reading for anyone concerned about the arts or their funding.\"--Jacket.
BOOK
WHY LIBERAL COSMOPOLITANS SHOULD WORRY ABOUT SUPPLY CHAINS
The complexity of supply chains means that it is difficult to tell where national security arguments begin and end. That may weaken some of the traditional arguments for free trade for the same reasons that we accept the difficulty of rational economic calculation in a socialist society. National security arguments for protectionism may not remain restricted to very small and manageable segments of the economy. Liberals and cosmopolitans will need to pay greater heed to these problems. This essay also considers why complex supply chains may create problems for a carbon tax and for the notion of corporate social responsibility.
Journal Article
Good and Plenty
Arts funding policy has dropped off the national public affairs radar in recent years, and much of the remaining debate continues to take the form of knee-jerk pro and con positions. Economist Cowen (In Praise of Commerical Culture) dismisses such debates at the outset, and goes on to make a case for the current American system, which, unlike the European model, emphasizes indirect, rather than direct, subsidies. Cowen finds that indirect funding-funding arts organizations rather than giving stipends to artists or commissioning works directly-is ultimately beneficial to the development of new artistic forms, and to helping arts endeavors flourish. He devotes significant pages to the history of arts funding in the U.S., including the New Deal-era Works Progress Administration, and also devotes a chapter to copyright, in which he argues that the Internet won't make traditional media and cultural forms disappear. Cowen references a range of well-known performers and artists, from Marian Anderson to Metallica, but the book is written as an academic treatise, with all the form and content constraints that that implies. For those truly interested in the state of America's financial relationship to the arts scene, though, it's a fresh approach.
eBook
In Praise of Commercial Culture
Does a market economy encourage or discourage music, literature, and the visual arts? Do economic forces of supply and demand help or harm the pursuit of creativity? This book seeks to redress the current intellectual and popular balance and to encourage a more favorable attitude toward the commercialization of culture that we associate with modernity. Economist Tyler Cowen argues that the capitalist market economy is a vital but underappreciated institutional framework for supporting a plurality of co-existing artistic visions, providing a steady stream of new and satisfying creations, supporting both high and low culture, helping consumers and artists refine their tastes, and paying homage to the past by capturing, reproducing, and disseminating it. Contemporary culture, Cowen argues, is flourishing in its various manifestations, including the visual arts, literature, music, architecture, and the cinema. Successful high culture usually comes out of a healthy and prosperous popular culture. Shakespeare and Mozart were highly popular in their own time. Beethoven's later, less accessible music was made possible in part by his early popularity. Today, consumer demand ensures that archival blues recordings, a wide array of past and current symphonies, and this week's Top 40 hit sit side by side in the music megastore. High and low culture indeed complement each other. Cowen's philosophy of cultural optimism stands in opposition to the many varieties of cultural pessimism found among conservatives, neo-conservatives, the Frankfurt School, and some versions of the political correctness and multiculturalist movements, as well as historical figures, including Rousseau and Plato. He shows that even when contemporary culture is thriving, it appears degenerate, as evidenced by the widespread acceptance of pessimism. He ends by considering the reasons why cultural pessimism has such a powerful hold on intellectuals and opinion-makers.
eBook
WHY HASN’T ECONOMIC PROGRESS LOWERED WORK HOURS MORE?
Why hasn’t economic progress lowered work hours more? One of Keynes’s most famous essays is his “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.” Keynes predicts that within one hundred years — which would bring us to 2030 — most scarcity will have disappeared and most individuals will work no more than fifteen hours a week. My question is a simple one: Why wasn’t Keynes right? Why have working hours remained as long as they have? Why hasn’t progress taken a more leisurely and less material form than what we have observed? Investigating that issue will help us get at the question of just how much progress has occurred. Under one view, Western life has been caught in a kind of rat race, and a lot of the gains of progress are illusory. For instance there is the argument that higher incomes are largely consumed as part of a futile race to win relative status, and living standards aren’t nearly as high as they might appear. Under some alternative scenarios, people haven’t moved to Keynes’s scenario for some good reasons, such as enjoying work more than we might think, or other hypotheses, as I will outline. In that case the observed changes in real income are robust, and measured correctly, or progress may even be greater than income measurements would indicate. I hope that addressing Keynes’s paradox can help us better understand this longstanding debate on the nature of modern progress.
Journal Article
Autistics appear different, but also are different, and this should be valued
We agree that autistics’ unusual overt behaviors don't necessarily mean reduced social motivation. But Jaswal & Akhtar maintain that, while autistics may appear socially uninterested, their social interest is in fact typical and indeed must be to avoid multiple poor outcomes. This problematic idealization of social typicality deflects attention from important differences in autistic cognition and interests, which should be valued.
Journal Article
The Industrial Organization of Online Education
Online education has flexibility and cost advantages over in-class teaching and these advantages will grow with improvements in information technology. We consider likely market structures given that the quality aspects of online education exhibit endogenous fixed costs. Concentration in the market for courses could be high, as it is currently in the market for textbooks. The not-for-profit sector will exhibit lower costs, lower concentration, and possibly zero price.
Journal Article
A Skeptical View of the National Science Foundation's Role in Economic Research
We can imagine a plausible case for government support of science based on traditional economic reasons of externalities and public goods. Yet when it comes to government support of grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for economic research, our sense is that many economists avoid critical questions, skimp on analysis, and move straight to advocacy. In this essay, we take a more skeptical attitude toward the efforts of the NSF to subsidize economic research. We offer two main sets of arguments. First, a key question is not whether NSF funding is justified relative to laissez-faire, but rather, what is the marginal value of NSF funding given already existing government and nongovernment support for economic research? Second, we consider whether NSF funding might more productively be shifted in various directions that remain within the legal and traditional purview of the NSF. Such alternative focuses might include data availability, prizes rather than grants, broader dissemination of economic insights, and more. Given these critiques, we suggest some possible ways in which the pattern of NSF funding, and the arguments for such funding, might be improved.
Journal Article
Censorship of U.S. movies in China
We introduce a structural econometric model to estimate the extent to which the Chinese government bans U.S. movies. According to our estimates, if a movie has characteristics similar to the median movie in our sample, then the probability is approximately 0.91 that the Chinese government will ban it. During our sample period, 1994–2019, U.S. movies comprised about 28 percent of the Chinese market and sales were about $22.6 billion. However, according to our estimates, if the Chinese government had not banned any U.S. movies, then the latter numbers would have risen to 68 percent and $45.1 billion.
Journal Article