Economic Perspectives on Cultural Heritage: An Introduction

The conference at which the chapters in this book were first presented was the first to deal with the specific subject of cultural heritage in terms of economic science. There had been, to be sure, several isolated contributions by economists. 1 But as of today, there is no consistent body of literature to set the context. Such is to be expected when a new subject begins to attract professional attention. Given this starting point, the conference had two aims: to gather empirical information about existing policies for the allocation and maintenance of cultural heritage, and to tentatively apply techniques of economic analysis to the phenomena observed. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.