Abstract This introduction presents the contributions to the special issue on the theoretical foundations of cultural economics. It discusses the role of theory in the field, emphasizing the limited presence of theoretical work in recent issues of the Journal of Cultural Economics, then situates the five papers within the broader literature. We describe how the selected papers build on and adapt existing economic frameworks to capture distinctive features of cultural markets—including market selection, preference formation, and the organization of production—and conclude by outlining directions for future theoretical research and the importance of theory for advancing cultural economics.
Courty et al. (Thu,) studied this question.