Government Intervention and Efficiency of Cultural Products: Determining the Optimum Border for Government Interventions in Tehran Theaters

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 MA (Economy of Art)

2 Assistant Professor, Islamic Sciences and Culture Academy

3 Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies

Abstract

Government intervention is one of the significant issues in economics. Hence, the study of the effects of government behavior on market is a very necessary issue. The question that arises regarding dramatic arts is whether government intervention has been effective in increasing efficiency of theater? The present article is an attempt to study the effect of government intervention on efficiency of production and the optimum border of government intervention in theater production. Linear, inverse U, and threshold specifications were used for the analysis of the data garnered from 120 plays produced in Tehran.
The data for this research were collected by a reliable questionnaire based on test-retest approach. The threshold level results indicate that in most cases government intervention has been more than optimum level and has reduced the efficiency of theater production. The results of linear specifications and inverse U are either negative and significant or insignificant. In sum, although these results do not prescribe lack of government intervention, they suggest that the government pays more attention to the impacts of its interventions. Moreover, the government in each intervention should take into consideration the border of effective intervention

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