The Tale of the Cuts and Raises: Public Budgets for Culture in the European Countries During the Financial Crisis

The article examines to what extent the public financing of the cultural sector was different, compared to other economic sectors of the economy in crisis. We perform an econometric analysis on the Eurostat COFOG dataset for 29 European countries in years 1990-2014. The results show that cuts in the cultural sector were present at general, central and local levels, yet happened with different characteristics than for other sectors of the economy. Also, the dynamics of public budgets for culture during the crisis significantly differed across the analysed countries and cuts were not present on a uniform level.