2006-09-19
Internat. Measurement of the Economic and Social Importance of Culture
This new OECD project will provide an approach to measuring the economic and social importance of culture and will deliver initial quantitative estimates of these measures. The project will also explore the linkages between culture and well-being. An international workshop is planned for December 2006.
The paper begins by taking a holistic view of culture, including social and economic aspects, and quality of life. The authors follow with a review of international work undertaken by UNESCO in the 1980s and the European Commission in the 1990s. Both projects recommended a two dimensional framework for assembling measures of culture, one dimension containing cultural domains such as visual arts, film, theatre etc. with the other delineating the processes from creation/production through to consumption/conservation.
From an international-comparison point of view, one of the problems with the UNESCO framework was the lack of precise definitions of the proposed measures. When the European Commission Leadership Group (LEG) attempted to bring precision to a subset of the UNESCO model they found the level of detail in the European classification standards lacking.
In examining existing data on the culture sector in five OECD countries - Australia, Canada, France, the United Kingdom and the United States - the authors highlight not only the lack of detail in the standards but also the different classifications used by each country.
Accepting that there is no existing operational framework in place for international comparative measurement of the culture sector, the paper explores the possibilities of using a System of National Accounts (SNA) approach for economic data. The SNA has the advantage of presenting an entire economy in a single coherent framework.
However, the classification standards lack of detail for the culture sector (identified by the LEG and others) means that various measures, readily available for other sectors, require a great deal of estimation and imputation when examining the culture sector.
The great strength of the SNA whereby all economic activity is classified by a single primary purpose and recorded in one and only one place in the accounts becomes a liability when examining culture sector. A considerable amount of cultural activity takes place in establishments whose primary classification is non cultural. Secondary economic activity, although present in the SNA, is invisible from an analytical point of view. Employment measurement faces similar challenges with the additional fact that measurement of volunteer work, a prominent feature of the culture sector, is not present at all in the core SNA.
Acknowledging all of the aforementioned difficulties, the paper does bring together some measures of the culture sector for the five countries and makes an initial attempt at coherent tabulation for some sectors. While the number of assumptions and the amount of estimation involved mean that any comparisons between countries should be undertaken with extreme caution, the authors also recognize that, on the positive side, there is a great deal of similarity in the scope used by the different countries and that there is an increasing interest in data on the culture sector.
The authors propose an international workshop in December 2006 to discuss the initial findings of the paper and are soliciting input from experts with a view to establishing a methodology that will produce internationally-comparable measures capable of informing cultural policy formation in OECD countries.
The four initial themes proposed for the workshop are:
- Economic indicators
- Classification standards
- Social indicators
- Linkages between the culture sector, societal well-being and a healthy economy.
A follow-up session is planned for June 2007 at the OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy which will focus on measuring the progress of societies.
Download: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/26/51/37257281.pdf
From an international-comparison point of view, one of the problems with the UNESCO framework was the lack of precise definitions of the proposed measures. When the European Commission Leadership Group (LEG) attempted to bring precision to a subset of the UNESCO model they found the level of detail in the European classification standards lacking.
In examining existing data on the culture sector in five OECD countries - Australia, Canada, France, the United Kingdom and the United States - the authors highlight not only the lack of detail in the standards but also the different classifications used by each country.
Accepting that there is no existing operational framework in place for international comparative measurement of the culture sector, the paper explores the possibilities of using a System of National Accounts (SNA) approach for economic data. The SNA has the advantage of presenting an entire economy in a single coherent framework.
However, the classification standards lack of detail for the culture sector (identified by the LEG and others) means that various measures, readily available for other sectors, require a great deal of estimation and imputation when examining the culture sector.
The great strength of the SNA whereby all economic activity is classified by a single primary purpose and recorded in one and only one place in the accounts becomes a liability when examining culture sector. A considerable amount of cultural activity takes place in establishments whose primary classification is non cultural. Secondary economic activity, although present in the SNA, is invisible from an analytical point of view. Employment measurement faces similar challenges with the additional fact that measurement of volunteer work, a prominent feature of the culture sector, is not present at all in the core SNA.
Acknowledging all of the aforementioned difficulties, the paper does bring together some measures of the culture sector for the five countries and makes an initial attempt at coherent tabulation for some sectors. While the number of assumptions and the amount of estimation involved mean that any comparisons between countries should be undertaken with extreme caution, the authors also recognize that, on the positive side, there is a great deal of similarity in the scope used by the different countries and that there is an increasing interest in data on the culture sector.
The authors propose an international workshop in December 2006 to discuss the initial findings of the paper and are soliciting input from experts with a view to establishing a methodology that will produce internationally-comparable measures capable of informing cultural policy formation in OECD countries.
The four initial themes proposed for the workshop are:
- Economic indicators
- Classification standards
- Social indicators
- Linkages between the culture sector, societal well-being and a healthy economy.
A follow-up session is planned for June 2007 at the OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy which will focus on measuring the progress of societies.
Download: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/26/51/37257281.pdf
A study by John C. Gordon and Helen Beilby-Orrin, OECD
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