International Measurement of the Economic and Social Importance of Culture

This report provides information on an OECD Project examining the feasibility of producing reliable international comparative measures of the culture sector. As part of the project, initial measures were produced for five countries and four cities. A draft version of this paper was circulated in August 2006 and, subsequently, an international workshop of experts was held in Paris in December 2006. Comments and recommendations from the participants at the workshop and from others have been incorporated into the paper. Section XII Next Steps contains a workplan that is designed to enable the production of reliable comparable measures on an ongoing basis.