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Municipal Financing of the U.S. Fine Arts Museum: A Historical Rationale

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  • Smolensky, Eugene

Abstract

Municipal involvement in the finance of fine arts museums raises the question: Just which market failure serves to rationalize this public subsidy? Two contenders are prominent in the literature: decreasing costs and education externalities. The relationship of price to marginal cost provides an operational test to distinguish among the two rationales. Scattered data from the 1880s and 1890s as well as contemporary discussion indicate that, implausible as it may seem now, education externalities constituted the operational justification for the public subsidy.

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  • Smolensky, Eugene, 1986. "Municipal Financing of the U.S. Fine Arts Museum: A Historical Rationale," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(3), pages 757-768, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:46:y:1986:i:03:p:757-768_04
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    Cited by:

    1. Frey, Bruno S. & Meier, Stephan, 2006. "The Economics of Museums," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 29, pages 1017-1047, Elsevier.
    2. Murat Arik & Hulya Varol & Stan McMillen, 2000. "The Economic Impact of the New Britain Museum of American Art Expansion," CCEA Studies 2000-05, University of Connecticut, Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis.
    3. David Yermack, 2017. "Donor governance and financial management in prominent US art museums," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 41(3), pages 215-235, August.
    4. Michael O’Hare, 2008. "Arts policy research for the next 25 years: a trajectory after Patrons Despite Themselves," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 32(4), pages 281-291, December.

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