White paper on creativity - ebla center

Part IVThe historical and artistic heritage: towards a theory ofgoodsThe historical and artistic heritage encompasses all those goods which make up the culturalcapital of a country. They may have a material form (art objects, museums, monumentsand landscapes) or an intangible form (contemporary arts, performing arts and folktraditions).Museums, monuments and landscapes are goods which belong to everyone not onlyhistorically or on the institutional grounds of collective ownership. In fact these specialgoods, so-called “public goods”, have no market for a number of substantial reasons. Theirconsumption, for example, does not reduce their supply capacity in quantitative terms or,in other words, an extra consumer modifies neither the cost of the production (or onlymarginally), nor the quantity supplied. This is the substantial requisite of non-rivalry inconsumption. When a tourist views the Gulf of Portofino, he or she does not reduce theconsumption for other possible tourists. Private goods, on the other hand, arecharacterised by rivalry in consumption. If I buy a fountain pen and use it, I have exclusiveownership, since it is a rival good.Within the limits of its production capacity and according to the institutional rulesconcerning the type of access, the consumption of a public good does not reduce thesupply or its non-excludability. Indeed, non-excludability of consumption is anotherproperty of public goods. Placing a Michelangelo sculpture in a public square does notexclude anyone from its visual consumption.This, however, is a non-substantial property, since exclusion in many cases is possible, thusgiving rise to a typology of mixed public goods, subject to congestion. Mixed public goodsinclude, for example, museums or historical monuments where exclusion is easily achievedby setting up an entrance and establishing the price for a visit. When accessibility to goodsis limited, the quality of consumption is modified because of the emergence of congestioncosts connected with managing the disproportionate number of consumers. In other cases,for example the landscape, exclusion is almost impossible, and we are dealing with a purepublic good.The main consequence of this class of goods is the absence of a market on which supplyand demand can meet, and the recourse to public supply. In fact, if we wish to offer apublic good privately, then free-rider behaviour – i.e. the behaviour of those who concealtheir preferences aware that in any case the production of a public good does not involveexcludability – would make the voluntary contribution of individuals less than what societyas a whole would effectively offer, generating situations of under-production of publicWHITE PAPER ON CREATIVITY 251