ABSTRACT
The combination of economics and the cultural and creative industries is complicated. The intangible nature of the cultural and creative industries does not lend itself to standard economic analysis deploying the utility and profit-maximising emphasis of neoclassical economics. A great deal of energy in academic studies of the creative industries (CI), and related terms, is spent on their definition. Whenever economists study areas outside their traditional field, the economy, they run the danger of misperceiving what contribution they are able to make. Several reviewers of the progress of cultural economics over the years have observed that many writers have begun their books or papers with an apology for presuming that economics might have anything useful to say about art. The interaction of creativity, the creative industries and innovation has become more obvious in recent years with the rise of interest in intellectual property (IP) policy.
