Aleksandra Wrona (p), Annie Tubadji, Valentina Montalto, Katarzyna Miszczak

What makes for a ‘smart city’ indeed? We first systematize the existing definitions from a growth theory perspective into: (i) smartness in terms of inputs for growth (especially human capital) and (ii) smartness in terms of output (i.e. accumulated wealth and well-being). Next, employing the Culture-Based Development (CBD) paradigm, that defines local cultural capital as the stock of living culture and cultural heritage, we hypothesize that local cultural capital determines the level of any type of city smartness. Using the novel dataset of the Cultural and Creative Cities Monitor of the European Commission for 190 European cities, we apply 2SLS IV approach. We find that living culture is positively associated with input smartness (i). Instead, cultural heritage is positively associated with output smartness (ii), but negatively associated with the input smartness (i). The latter finding seems paradoxical, yet we suggest a plausible social-closure-related explanation.

Konstantinos Laskaratos (p)

Govindapuram Suresh

The relationship between museums and society undergoes constant transformations. That makes sense as the museum itself, over the centuries, has served different roles. In ancient times, people called 'museum' the temple of the Muses, dedicated to the nine Muses, daughters of Zeus and Memory, patrons of history, arts, and sciences (Γλύτση, 2002). The institution built by Ptolemy in the 3rd century BC was also called a museum. It was inside his palace and included a library, areas for astronomy and anatomy studies, a botanical garden, and a zoo (Αντζουλάτου – Ρετσίλα, 2005). During the Roman era, 'the museum survives and turns into the Latin museum, which refers mainly to a place for philosophical discussions and not to a place that collects and exhibits objects' (Οικονόμου Μαρία, 2003, pp. 31-32). In the Middle Ages, monasteries and churches undertake the collecting activity. In the Renaissance, in the 15th century, the term 'museum' describes the collection of Lorenzo the Magnificent of the Medici (Ορφανίδη Λάια, 2003, p. 9). From the 16th century, nobles organised collections of a wide range of strange objects, which in German are referred to as Wunderkammer, but in English as Cabinet of Curiosities (Hooper - Greenhill Eilean, 1992). In the 17th century, universities opened public museums, such as that of Basel, founded in 1671, and the Ashmolean, in 1683 (Οικονόμου Μαρία, 2003, p. 33), while in the 18th century September 27, 1782, is considered a milestone when a decree was issued in Paris to establish a museum on the site of the old Louvre palace, which finally opened in 1793 (Hooper - Greenhill Eilean, 1992). Modern museums have long since ceased to be just for the collection, the exhibition, and the preservation of objects. Nowadays, they re-evaluate their priorities, taking seriously all visitors' wishes and needs. Moreover, the pandemic wave accelerated the adoption of modern technological options. The purpose of this study is to examine, through the example of the Louvre, to what extent the digital upgrade of large museums can contribute to the democratization of the institution and the highest possible inclusion.

Maryam Alomair (p)

Konstantinos Laskaratos

There are cultural differences across space in the attitudes towards women, especially famously so across the East and West context. Yet, cultural attitudes can change over time, but little is known how this happens. Culture based Development has suggested that a cultural hysteresis exists – defining the latter as a disproportional changes in cultural persistence across space under identical shocks (Tubadji, Nijkamp & Angelis 2016; Tubadji, Webber and Boy 2020; Tubadji et al. 2021). The COVID-19 setting offers an excellent natural experiment setting to study to what extent local cultural attitudes to women (and especially labour market discrimination to women) persists or changes under labour market shock conditions such as the pandemic. Using individual labour market data representative on regional level for the UK and Saudi Arabia, the labour market discrimination towards women is analyzed through an Oaxaca-Blinder detailed decomposition analysis, allowing us to distinguish between the effects of education, industrial specialization that may be gender-wise related and ultimately to single out the extent of discrimination that is pure cultural discrimination of women in the UK and Saudi Arabia labour markets before and after the pandemic period. The spatial effects are analyzed on three levels – between countries (the UK and Saudi Arabia, between regions in each country and across a rural urban distinction). The spatial exploration of the gender labour market discrimination is illustrated through the inclusion of spatial dummies, and then triangulated through the use of spatial error and lag models and a hierarchical (multi-level model). The findings offer surprising insight on the commonalities and CBD consistent-evidence for the differences in response to a common shock in terms of the changes in the persistence of the discrimination against women in the East and the West.

Annie Tubadji, Govindapuram Suresh (p)

Maryam Alomair

The aim of this paper is to identify the caste that most often takes the role of a Bank Middlemen between the poor and the loan giving institutions in rural India. We would like to understand what is the relative socio-economic positioning of this caste that empowers it to undertake this role and how strong this power holds.
The paper seeks to increase our understanding of the socio-economic empowerment of certain cultural ‘clubs’. To achieve this, we conduct primary data collection, since caste identity is not easily accessible as information on individual level, especially in the context of corrupted behaviour. Thus, only snowball sampling can allow for this type of information to be obtained.
We gather data about the experience of the poor rural bank client with corrupted middlemen, posing questions about their own cast, the cast of the middleman and their perceived socio-economic sources of bargaining power in this setting. We also ask the rural bank client: (i) whether they would be willing to report the corrupted middleman to an authority handling such complaints and (ii) we will give them the opportunity to report the person to us. Previous research shows that opportunity to file complaints decreases bureaucratic inefficiency.
We add value to this with insights on cultural bargaining power and differences between expressive behavior (stating the willingness to report corruption) and actual behaviour. To explain cultural empowerment and quantify the difference in cultural power we employ the Culture Based Development paradigm and its approach to measuring individual and local cultural capital.
Using a plethora of econometric techniques with a clear identification strategy, we find evidence for the role of cultural capital in the empowerment of the middlemen in the grey part of the banking sector in India and the willingness of individuals/bank clients to report these cases.