What Drives Growth of Jobs and the Arts? a Chicken and Egg Analysis

In the classical economic view, jobs attract workers to a city. The new workers patronize amenities, such as restaurants, shops, and entertainment, which in turn expand. Thus, in this view, jobs are the main factor for city growth. However, in our study, we add the hypothesis that the arts and related amenities also may attract people to a city. Arts and amenities may serve to attract workers, shifting where they choose to live. This in turn increases the growth of non-arts related industries in the region. Thus, do cities grow primarily due to the jobs created by non-arts industries, or also due to the presence of arts amenities and entertainment? This is the chicken and egg question.

We use zipcode data from the American census to analyze the relationship between the growth of the arts as related to other industries. We use cross-lagged regressions on fifteen years of data in more than 30,000 zip codes in the US. The analysis crosses data from different years and time spans, using the number of arts jobs as a reference to the growth of arts related-industries. Preliminary results show that arts and non-art industries take turns in influencing primarily the growth of cities, thus, providing evidence that both arts and other industries are relevant for the growth of cities. However, analyses are still being done to obtain more subtle results.