Artists In Love With Work? An Analysis Of The Brazilian Urban Areas

The model developed by Throsby in A work-preference model of artist behaviour, in 1994, has given rise to a series of theoretical and empirical works to assess whether the insertion of artists as workers is due to non-pecuniary issues such as acceptance by peers and fans, idiosyncratic life, and free expression of their creativity vis-à-vis pecuniary returns. In some studies, it is shown that, on average, artists are more satisfied with their work than other professionals, as exposed by Bille et al. (2013) and Bille, Løyland, and Holm (2017). Inspired by Bille et al. (2017), this paper investigates the labor supply of artists, aged between 18 and 65 years old, residing in urban areas in Brazil. The research covers the period from 2016 to 2022. The data source is the Continuous National Household Sample Survey (PNADC/ IBGE), organized as a rotating panel with five visits to the same household. The period between 2016 and 2022 is considered in the present study. The results show that levels of low earnings in other jobs have a positive relationship with artistic work hours and a negative relationship with leisure hours, while higher wage levels show an inverse relationship with leisure hours.