The Arts, New Growth Theory, and Economic Development
New growth theory argues that, in advanced economies, economic growth stems less from the acquisition of additional capital and more from innovation and new ideas. On May 10, the Brookings Institution and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) hosted a symposium examining new growth theory as a tool for assessing the impact of art and culture on the U.S. economy, including the theory that cities play a major role in facilitating economic growth. The symposium featured papers jointly commissioned by the NEA Office of Research and Analysis and Michael Rushton, the co-editor of the Journal of Cultural Economics. The presentations were moderated by experts from Brookings, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Commerce.
Ed Glaeser, Harvard economist and author of Triumph of the City (Penguin Press, 2011), gave keynote remarks; along with a some of the nation’s leading cultural economists, other speakers included Bruce Katz, vice president and co-director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings and Carol Graham, senior fellow in the Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development Programs at Brookings and author of Happiness Around the World (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Agenda
9:00 AM - Welcome
Rocco Landesman
Chairman
9:15 AM -- Panel One: Creative Clustering
10:45 AM -- Panel Two: Economic Growth and Innovation
Moderator: Alan Marco
Deputy Chief Economist
Douglas Noonan
Associate Professor
Bob Root-Bernstein
Professor
Margaret Wyszomirski
Professor
12:25 PM -- Featured Speaker
Moderator: Bonnie Nichols
Office of Research & Analysis
1:30 PM -- Panel Three: Capital Investment and Cultural Consumption
Moderator: Michael Rushton
Associate Professor, Indiana University
Roland Kushner
Assistant Professor
Ann Markusen
Professor and Director, Arts Economy Initiative and the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics
Rachel Soloveichik
Economist
3:00 PM -- Panel Four: Case Studies on the Arts and Economic Development
Moderator: Valerie Piper
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Development
Richard Maloney
Assistant Professor
Lauren Schmitz
Ph.D. Student in Economics
4:15 PM -- Discussion: Arts and Economic Well-Being
Moderator: Sunil Iyengar
Director, Office of Research & Analysis
4:55 PM -- Concluding Remarks
Rocco Landesman
Chairman
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