Cultural and Creative Industries: Empirical Evidence on Employment Growth

Abstract

This paper analyses the role played by cultural and creative industries (CCIs) in employment growth at local level in Catalonia between 2001 and 2011. This is a novel approach as, differently to most of previous contributions, several profiles of municipalities (i.e., small, medium and large) and CCIs subsectors are considered. Our results indicate that specialization in some CCIs boost employment but only for high-growth municipalities (in terms of employment). In view of these heterogeneous effects, policy measures regarding CCIs should be more selective and focus on these industries / areas where there is a potential effect over employment. Keywords: creative industries, employment growth, cities, Catalonia. JEL codes: C11, R11, R58