THE ARTS AS GROWTH MOTOR
A stable and wide-ranging artistic offer is a prime condition to originate and expand creativity which is fundamental for an entrepreneurial, wealth creating society.
Joan Hortalá , profesor for Theoretical Economics (University of Barcelona) and head of the Barcelona Stock Exchange.
Knowledge about economic growth is definitely an important issue. No country would principally reject a bigger GNP. With the availability of more goods and services the cake is bigger and the pieces are greater for everyone, independent from its relative size, of course.
Conventional economic theories associate different relevant factors to growth. First, the productive means, basically capital and human capital. Second, a considerable role goes to technology, especially in relation to the innovation of processes, products or markets. And third, today one is conscious - as a novel outline - about the posibilities drawn from the knowledge generation.
Thus, capital, technology and knowledge are factors to be taken into account. But, what is the element which usually connects all of them to achieve the pursued goal? Putting away with all ideological bias and supported by a huge history of empirical evidence, it is widely accepted that the connecting element is nothing else than entrepreneurship. And that means the entrepreneurial capacity or simply: the entrepreneur.
If economic growth therefore depends on entrepreneurship, it seems adequate to investigate the factors which provide it. In this sense, one can register an extremely high correlation between the increase of entrepreneurial capacity and the promotion of creativity.
There is a common agreement that in order to increase creativity one has to deal with a mixture of three elements: personal, institutional and cultural ones. Regarding the intellectual training, this is the personal element- without excluding the emotional which relates to the formation of character. To have a context of liberties at one´s disposal like usually provided by contemporary democratic regimes, constitutes the institutional element. However, the key question is: which should be the appropriate cultural environment to generate creativity.
In agreement with a unique conclusion mentioned by Ferrater Mora who is referring to Jasinowski, art anticipates philosophical change and the latter scientific and technological change. Therefore, one can deduct that the artist intuitively anticipates before everyone else the changing problems of humanity and consequently offers integrated and adjusted results. This way he stimulates emotions which originate beliefs, which form attitudes, which finally lead to behavior. Thanks to this interrelation, individual as well as social performances are modified naturally in manifold ways on an integrated cultural level. But thanks to the work of the artist, the results established in this way converge in archetypes and metaphors which then facilitate the formation of hipothesis in analytical processes.
From this perspective the conclusion is obvious: the artistic education of the people has to be empowered. This is true for all the arts but especially for music and painting, because they create and erase individual as well as collective emotions. And to the extent in which from emotion emerges belief, from there attitude and finally behaviour, the arts help to design creative individuals and societies.
Thus to make available a strong demand of artistic services which on the other hand allows to create a stable artistic offer is the prime condition to stimulate economic growth. Because the arts -to the extent in which they contribute in originating and expanding creativity - generate entrepreneurship, the fundamental condition to achieve this objective.
STAND POINTS
- In a scholarly and suggestive study, Professor José Ramón Lasuén arguments that "in whatever political context the number and quality of available scientists, engineers, doctors and executives is a necessary but not sufficient condition for economic growth. When, on the other hand, an adequate number and quality of entrepreneurs exists, countries enjoy more prosperity. Of course, the material prosperity increases even more with the collaboration of scientists, engineers, doctors and executives...".
- Demand has to be capable to provoke an artistic offer without having to call on private or public patronage, so dependend and discriminating.
Joan Hortala
