Public subsidies and repertoire originality in Italian theatres: a panel data analysis

Abstract This study empirically examines whether public subsidies increase the originality of programming decisions of 40 Italian opera and drama theatres from the 2015–16 to the 2022–23 season, exploiting a newly assembled panel dataset. It innovates on the literature as it (1) provides the first panel data analysis of the relationship, allowing to examine the originality of programming choices also over time; (2) calculates the conventionality indexes separately by genre (opera and drama), author and title; (3) deals with Italian theatres. The estimates with theatre fixed effects show that a higher share of subsidies in total revenues of opera theatres are associated with greater originality in the choice of authors but not of titles; for drama theatres, subsidies do not promote greater originality. Across genres, the capacity of the venue is positively correlated with conventionality, while the education of the potential audience allows for more original programming choices. A battery of robustness tests confirms these results.