Why do we need a cultural economics? History and development of the field

This chapter begins the issue of definition of the field and its relationship to leisure in general. It is argued that cultural economics often suffers from the paradox of providing forms of analysis that are not very ‘cultural’. the chapter provides a review of the idea of cultural economics in the history of thought from Adam Smith to World War II with general discussion of pertinent aspects of neoclassical welfare economics. Work by economists in the Association of Cultural Economics International (ACEI) and in the Journal of Cultural Economics are highlighted in terms of the key developments such as Baumol’s ‘cost disease’. Attention is drawn to the increasingly empirical focus of work by these economists. A critical review of the field by David Throsby, in 1994, is used as a benchmark to identify possible progress in the research area. It is claimed that several of the items identified by him are still lacking in significant progress.