On the Efficient Supply of Cultural Goods

Facing funding uncertainties and reduced subsidies, the cultural sector is forced to use its limited resources as efficiently as possible. The question of how to measure the efficiency of a cultural organisation has been address in the literature over the past three decades. While cultural goods and services cannot be appropriately valuated using conventional market-oriented measures alone, the efficiency of cultural organisations can be measured using a variety of methods. The most common and versatile method is the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach, a method that has been used to assess theatres, cinemas, libraries, and museums. Previous studies have assessed the efficiency of museums in Italy, Spain, Czech Republic and Belgium, among other countries. Dutch museums, surprisingly, have not been researched thus far. To address this gap in the literature, this master thesis uses two DEA models to assess the efficiency of 17 Dutch museums over three years. Furthermore, it deviates from previous DEA models by including variables related to museums’ digital goods and services. The analysis finds that most museums are operating efficiently in each of the evaluated years. It also finds that the remaining museums are severely inefficient. These findings are markedly higher than those of previous studies and suggest further investigations to better ascertain the reasons for such differences.