May, 2004
I will not survey the immense literature on development but rather I will focus on one particular question: should regions make special bids to attract growth-enhancing resources? And more specifically, might the arts serve as such a resource? If so, under what conditions?
Such questions have at least two motivations. First, we are interested in understanding economic growth more generally. We wish to know to what extent historical growth has been driven by the arts, or by creative clusters more generally. Second, we face ongoing policy questions about how to generate economic growth, and how governments should support the arts.