Ruth Towse, born in Lowton, UK, in 1943. Ph.D. from the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Professor of Economics of Creative Industries at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Fellow (1 September 2006 – 30 June 2007)
REWARDING CREATIVITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE
During the year, I gathered together a number of papers and got them published and made good progress on writing my book a textbook on cultural economics. Cultural economics is a small field in applied economics and Erasmus University specializes in this area. Our Masters course in Cultural Economics and Cultural Entrepreneurship revealed the need for a textbook in the subject. There is at the moment no comprehensive treatment of the subject at the graduate level. My book deals with the the economics of creative industries, now the subject of policy widely adopted in all developed countries and some less developed ones for stimulating economic growth. Central to this is the issue of what policy measures, especially those connected to financial subsidy and copyright law, should be adopted in this sector. The question of how to stimulate creativity and how this can be achieved by government policy continues to present a challenge to people in many disciplines. Economics makes its own contribution to the debate and cultural economics specializes in so doing. I have a contract with Cambridge University Press to publish the book in 2008.