IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tcd/tcduee/tep0711.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

War and Creativity: Solving the War-Art Puzzle for Classical Music Composition

Author

Listed:
  • Karol Jan BOROWIECKI

    (Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin)

Abstract

The relationship between conflict and artistic output is ambiguous. This paper proposes an explanation for the contradiction in research, which we term the war-art puzzle. We employ a global sample of 115 prominent classical composers born after 1800 and link their annual productivity with the incidence of wars. We construct age-productivity profiles and find that the impact of wars on creative production is markedly heterogeneous - composers' productivity was significantly higher during defensive or victorious international wars and lower during intra-state conflicts, offensive or lost international wars. the long-run.

Suggested Citation

  • Karol Jan BOROWIECKI, 2011. "War and Creativity: Solving the War-Art Puzzle for Classical Music Composition," Trinity Economics Papers tep0711, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0711
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.tcd.ie/Economics/TEP/2011/TEP0711.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karol Jan Borowiecki, 2012. "Are composers different? Historical evidence on conflict-induced migration (1816-1997)," European Review of Economic History, Oxford University Press, vol. 16(3), pages 270-291, August.
    2. Hellmanzik, Christiane, 2010. "Location matters: Estimating cluster premiums for prominent modern artists," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 199-218, February.
    3. David Galenson, 2000. "The Careers of Modern Artists," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 24(2), pages 87-112, May.
    4. David W. Galenson & Bruce A. Weinberg, 2000. "Age and the Quality of Work: The Case of Modern American Painters," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(4), pages 761-777, August.
    5. Victor Ginsburgh & Sheila Weyers, 2006. "Creativity and Life Cycles of Artists," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 30(2), pages 91-107, September.
    6. David W. Galenson & Bruce A. Weinberg, 2001. "Creating Modern Art: The Changing Careers of Painters in France from Impressionism to Cubism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1063-1071, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. What did two centuries of war do to classical music?
      by Chris Blattman in Chris Blattman on 2011-04-12 16:55:11

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Borowiecki, Karol Jan, 2013. "Geographic clustering and productivity: An instrumental variable approach for classical composers," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 94-110.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Douglas Hodgson, 2011. "Age–price profiles for Canadian painters at auction," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 35(4), pages 287-308, November.
    2. Douglas J. Hodgson & Christiane Hellmanzik, 2019. "Relationships between artistic movements and careers of modern artists: evidence from hedonic regressions with auction data," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 43(2), pages 309-337, June.
    3. Galbraith, John W. & Hodgson, Douglas J., 2012. "Dimension reduction and model averaging for estimation of artists' age-valuation profiles," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 422-435.
    4. John Galbraith & Douglas Hodgson, 2015. "Innovation, experience and artists’ age-valuation profiles: evidence from eighteenth-century rococo and neoclassical painters," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 39(3), pages 259-275, August.
    5. Robert B. Ekelund & John D. Jackson & Robert D. Tollison, 2015. "Age and productivity: An empirical study of early American artists," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 81(4), pages 1096-1116, April.
    6. Christiane Hellmanzik, 2009. "Artistic styles: revisiting the analysis of modern artists’ careers," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 33(3), pages 201-232, August.
    7. John W. Galbraith & Douglas J. Hodgson, 2018. "Econometric Fine Art Valuation by Combining Hedonic and Repeat-Sales Information," Econometrics, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-15, June.
    8. Christiane Hellmanzik, Department of Economics and IIIS, Trinity College Dublin, 2009. "Artistic Clusters and Modern Artists’ Mobility - An Empirical Study," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp296, IIIS.
    9. Zanola, Roberto & Vecco, Marilena & Jones, Andrew, 2021. "A place for everything and everything in its place: New York's role in the art market," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 215-224.
    10. Hellmanzik, Christiane, 2013. "Democracy and economic outcomes: Evidence from the superstars of modern art," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 58-69.
    11. Kathryn Graddy & Carl Lieberman, 2018. "Death, Bereavement, and Creativity," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(10), pages 4505-4514, October.
    12. Borowiecki, Karol Jan & Dahl, Christian Møller, 2021. "What makes an artist? The evolution and clustering of creative activity in the US since 1850," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    13. Victor Ginsburgh & Sheila Weyers, 2006. "Creativity and Life Cycles of Artists," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 30(2), pages 91-107, September.
    14. Jose Sanchez-Fung, 2019. "Examining the life-cycle artistic productivity of Latin American photographers," ACEI Working Paper Series AWP-05-2019, Association for Cultural Economics International, revised Dec 2019.
    15. Ventura Charlin & Arturo Cifuentes, 2013. "A new financial metric for the art market," Papers 1309.6929, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2015.
    16. Hellmanzik, Christiane, 2010. "Location matters: Estimating cluster premiums for prominent modern artists," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 199-218, February.
    17. Bayer Thomas & Page John & Raviv Yaron & Rosett Joshua, 2013. "Age, Human Capital, and the Quality of Work: New Evidence from Old Masters," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 687-708, July.
    18. Heinrich W. Ursprung & Christian Wiermann, 2011. "Reputation, Price, And Death: An Empirical Analysis Of Art Price Formation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(3), pages 697-715, July.
    19. Robert B. Ekelund & John D. Jackson & Robert D. Tollison, 2013. "Are Art Auction Estimates Biased?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 80(2), pages 454-465, October.
    20. Christiane Hellmanzik, 2013. "Does travel inspire? Evidence from the superstars of modern art," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 281-303, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    productivity; conflict; war; innovation; composer;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • F51 - International Economics - - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy - - - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • N40 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - General, International, or Comparative
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0711. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detcdie.html .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Colette Angelov (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detcdie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.