Public Policies for Art and Culture

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the future direction of the policy of quasipublic goods as cultural art by applying a theoretical and institutional analysis. The movement of the public finance system, which supports cultural art, is said to combine not only the government and the private sector, but also include the non-profit sector. Research concerning the support of cultural art through the non-profit sector is prospering increasingly. Based on such circumstances, this paper discusses market situation and type of income distribution categorized into two cases for analyzing the justifiability of the government support for cultural art. The analysis in this paper is based on the separation of the autonomous principle of the market as well as the intervention and coordination through the government, which are types of cultural art support policies. Furthermore, financial resources are categorized into three cases. First, there is the case of maintaining the financial resource from business return. Second, there is the case of using the income of sold admission tickets for covering one part of the costs, and using the remaining money as additional subsidy or transfer income. Third, there is the possibility to maintain financial resources through the public sector. Based on the analysis of these three cases’ merits and demerits and their transformation as well as mixture, we examine a suitable policy.

Additionally, this paper discusses the relation between government subsidy and private donations, focusing mainly on their substitution and complementation. It then takes a look at the relation between the efficiency of public support and supporting motivation as well as the optimal combination of private donations and public support. The paper integrates the consideration of the characteristics of tax system and tax policy in the analysis of cultural art.