ECONOMICS UNIQUENESS

3
Heritage Economics:
A Conceptual Framework
David Throsby
Distinguished Professor of Economics, Macquarie University (Australia)
This chapter outlines a conceptual framework that integrates various strands from
the discussion of heritage economics and provides an interpretation of some of
the major issues of concern. The chapter is structured as follows: fi rst, the basic
concept of heritage as asset is discussed, placing it clearly into the context of
capital theory. This leads, in the section on sustainability, to a consideration of
the parallels between heritage as cultural capital on the one hand and environmental
resources as natural capital on the other. These parallels have implications
for the sustainability of the cultural and natural resources involved. The central
issue in heritage economics is the question of value, discussed in detail further in
the section on value and valuation; the analysis here divides the value embodied
in or generated by heritage assets into economic and cultural components, and
considers the critical issue of measurement. In the next section, the framework
is extended to the policy arena, with a discussion of the major economic instruments
for the implementation of heritage policy. The fi nal section describes a case
study of the application of some of the principles of heritage economics to a cultural
investment project developed in Skopje, capital of FYR Macedonia, assisted
by a World Bank project.
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