The economics of creativity

by Throsby

Believe me, no good work in this world was ever done for money… A real painter will work for bread and water; and a bad painter will work badly, though you give him a palace to live in.

(John Ruskin, The Political Economy of Art, 1857).

Introduction

The concept of creativity as a dynamic force in human behavior has long been a subject for study among psychologist sociologist but not economists. Yet any consideration of the relationship between economics and culture would be incomplete if it failed to pay attention to creative work in arts. Then it might be expected that economic as well as cultural influence will affect the way in which creative ideas are formed. There is important question: are there a parallel process where economic and cultural worth are generated separately or is the process of value creation one that could be understand only as a unitary phenomenon?

Definition

Here creativity is considered in terms of work of creative artist (poets, painters etc). The attention is concentrated on ones for whom the creative act has primarily importance.

Theories of creativity

1) During the XVII – XVIII centuries a number of works were written on the subject of creative Genius. The word "Genius" signified a mode of thought; genius as the source of creativity inspiration. There was a religious or at least spiritual association with this notion. Creativity as a gift from God, the artist as a channel for a superior power. Within these works were many efforts to describe how the process of artist inspiration occurred. The most famous – William Duff in 1767 in his essay identified the principal ingredients of Genius as: imagination - which finds new association between existing ideas; judgement – which regulates and controls the imagination, sorts out the ideas it generates; taste - artist’s internal sensibility. So, the main question of that period was – how the mind works.

2) In recent time the idea of creativity has been changed. Nowadays there are two important point: a) creativity is definable only in individual-specific terms, that there is no way of identifying an absolute standards of genius;

b) creation and valuation of creativity occur in social and political context which have the effect on taste and judgment of the powerful classes in society.

So, we should to outline two reasonable points, including the fact that subjectivity and relativity can never be banished from consideration of artistic creation either the influence on the creativity act exerted by the social and political context in which creativity occurs can not be disregarded.

Knowing that let’s ask ourselves whether it might be possible to model the production of artistic work as a process of rational decision-making process? In some sense it has been already done by breaking down the act of creativity into three stages, what we mentioned above, each stage with certain function, the whole converted in logical order and leading to definable goal. But directly from a economic discourse creativity drawing as a process of optimization, where the artist is seen as a rational maximiser of individual utility.

Economic model of creativity

I A "pure" creativity model

If the artistic or cultural worth of the work can be defined as it cultural value, than the artist’s aim in making the work might be as one of maximizing this expected cultural value. In a rational economizing framework, this might be construed as the artist’s utility function – i.e. the utility of the artist is seen as a function of the cultural value of the work and this utility is the quantity to maximized.

Cultural value is instilled into works by creative artists who respond to the mysterious leaps of the imagination and transform them into images, words and sounds. For instance, Terry Smith described this as a process of "forming flows of value".

The objective function is bounded by essentially technical constrains, imposed by the "rules of game" and the demand of the artform.

The decision variable in the model might be conceptualized as a number and nature of works to be produced over some period of time. For simplicity and generalisability it is appropriate to specify the decision variables in terms of the time spent at various tasks. Such an approach would assume that a unit of work time of particular sort would lead to a certain amount of cultural value in the output.

But this a hypothesis that output of cultural value is expressible as a function of labor time has strong assumptions about the very nature of the creative act. For the mediocre artist large amount of the time spent give works judged to be of little cultural value, for the so-called genius - the reverse obtains. This difference artist in talent (in creativity) is equal to what in microeconomic analysis calls differences in technology. Such conceptualization of creativity is consistent with theories of the creative process requiring spontaneous thinking ad rapid response to intellectual stimuli.

II An extended model introducing economics variables

The model mentioned above is in some sort of vacuum, free of the impacts of the necessities o the life such as the artist’s need for good, clothing and shelter. Thus the model needs to be extended. So, we should specifying the income from artistic work as an explicit variable in the model. There are three ways in which income might be entered into our model of the creative process: as a constraint, as joint maximand, as a sole maximand.

Income as a constraint

In our model with objective function and technical constrains we simply added further constraint – i.e. certain minimum level of income. This is simply necessary element in the decision process that can not be ignored. Objective is still remain the maximization of cultural value – here still focusing on "pure" artistic creativity, but within a limitation imposed by the income requirement.

Income constraint may effect the production of cultural value in different ways such as orientation towards such forms of culture products which would have more income-earning potential. It also may means that less costly inputs (materials) have to be used in compared with those if the constraint were absent.

This model applicable in non-commercial theatre, classical music and much of opera, jazz, poetry.

Income as joint maximand

For many artists subsistence even at a reasonable comfortable level is insufficient, they desire provide not only higher standards of good, clothing and housing but also access to all other goods. But they are strongly motivated to create art, that why they are artist not a banker.

In this case, we can propose that the artist’s utility is comprised of both cultural and financial rewards. So, the objective function should be restated as a joint maximization of the cultural and economic value arising from the work. The technical constraints remain as were before.

This model provides a commercial orientation t the production of art, popmusic.

Income as a sole maximand

Some artists are cultural producers only for money. But strictly speaking, the production of cultural value is absent, there are only by definition cultural worker. It is not something to be maximized but money. So, the maximization of economic value become the sole of motivation for creativity.

This model is likely to be most applicable to tourist art, some craft, much of film, commercial TV and popular music.

In addition, this model could be extended do account for the possibility of multiple job-holding and of non-art job.

Value in the work of creative artists

Next point is about how cultural and economic value are formed in the work of creative artists.

Creativity, as was mentioned above, defined as a creation of value (economic of cultural). Artist work exists in an embodied form (painting, sculpture) of as property right (music, poem). They could be traded – i.e. they have economic worth.

Simultaneously, the work also exists as an idea. Idea though public circulation indicating the cultural value of itself.

So, there exists both a physical market for artworks which determines economic value; and a parallel marketplace for the ideas which determines its cultural value - they are related to each other.

We might to summaries that artist work might be interpreted as a supplying a dual market.

Creativity as an irrational process

Let’s ask whether creativity is in fact the very antithesis of a structured process. Truly creative ideas are generated by subverting the rules.

There are the several ways in which the process of artistic creation is irrational:

There is need to be empirical supported, it help understand to what extent this model livable.

Conclusion

To sum up, creativity remains an elusive phenomenon. In order to link a concept of creativity as a cultural phenomenon with the observable economic realities here have been proposed a models based on the creation of cultural and economic value. In modeling the artists production it was suggested that not only artist but also the product of their work allocate into dual market (market of physical good/market of ideas).

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