Introduction to the special issue in honour of Professor David Throsby

This special issue of the Journal of Cultural Economics honours Professor David Throsby, whose work over more than five decades has helped define cultural economics as a scholarly discipline. The seven papers gathered here span the economics of the performing arts, cultural value and its measurement, cultural capital, artists’ labour markets, cultural heritage, museum governance, and the digital creative economy. They are complemented by a reflection from Creative Australia on the policy legacy of Throsby’s four decades of surveys of professional artists in Australia. A recurring thread is the continued productivity of the theoretical frameworks Throsby developed: the work-preference model is both extended and empirically tested; cultural capital and the distinction between economic and cultural value inform new approaches to heritage valuation and policy; and the natural monopoly model finds fresh application in platform economics. Drawing also on an interview with Throsby conducted for this issue, the introduction situates these contributions within the arc of his career and the questions that continue to animate the field.