The Social Benefits of Urban Cultural Amenities*

ABSTRACT. This paper uses a two‐stage hedonic wage approach to derive the benefits from improvement of five cultural amenities. It is argued that the hedonic approach permits valuation of both private and local public aspects of cultural goods since access to the amenity is an essential input in the production of the final service flow. Empirical estimates of willingness to pay suggest price and income elasticities are approximately unity. Lower‐bound estimates of marginal benefits for a representative city range from 0. 85 million for an additional theater to 57. 9 million for an additional zoo facility.