South South
B. Moving forward: approaches and initiatives to measure the creative economythe creative economy
There is no “right” or “wrong” model of creative industries, nor a “one-size-fits-all” approach to measuring a creative economy. However, countries must choose an approach that best fits their economy, as each country will have their own industries, goods and services that are a part of the creative sector. It is important for countries to understand the various industries with creative component that exist in their economy, then begin to compile and analyse data on these sectors.
In 2008, the United Kingdom-based Nesta innovation fund developed an approach to allow estimation of the numbers employed in the creative industries and in creative occupations outside the creative industries. The so called “creative trident methodology” (Higgs, Cunningham, and Bakhshi, 2008) focuses on employment, rather than production or trade data. The model offers policymakers several advantages over other approaches: it focuses on core creative added value; helps distinguish creative individuals working in other sectors and creative individuals and others who work in creative industries; it uses census data rather than sample surveys; and lastly it enables to determine the total personal earnings arising from creative employment.
In 2013, Nesta, with the United Kingdom’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport, published a report titled A Dynamic Mapping of the UK’s Creative Industries (Bakhshi et al., 2013), which presented a new way of classifying the United Kingdom’s creative industries. This new approach focused on the creative intensities. This model measured the employment within the creative sectors as a proportion of total employment in the industry. The dynamic mapping approach, which is a three-stage process states that an industry with a high percentage of cultural or creative workers, can be considered a creative industry.
Countries interested in measuring their creative economy can adopt a general approach. Figure 31 presents a framework with the key steps. It includes setting objectives, bringing together relevant stakeholders, conceptualising and defining the scope of creative industries, identifying parameters to measure (i.e., contribution to GDP and employment in the industries considered creative, exports of creative goods and services) and available data sources, data collection, analysis of the collected qualitative and quantitative information, and their evaluation.
Figure 31
General framework to measure a country’s creative economy
Source: UNCTAD.
Objective Stakeholders
Concept and scope of creative industries
Parameters to measure and
data availability Data collection Analysis Evaluation
The General Assembly resolution 74/198 stresses the importance of regular, reliable, and comparable data on the contribution of the creative economy to the achievement of the SDGs. However, difficulties in measuring the domestic production and international trade in creative products and services remain challenging for most developing countries. The lack of universal definitions and comparable statistics makes comparing statistics on the creative economy across countries difficult.
The traditional separation between goods and services may be inadequate when it comes to measuring trade in creative products. Creativity is an intangible quality, which may be embodied into a good or a service. This good or service can be consumed locally or exported. The measurement challenge is therefore to estimate the domestic and imported creative content of all products that are domestically produced and exported, rather than classifying the whole item as “creative” or “non-creative.” The current UNCTAD definition may not capture fully trade in goods with actual creative content and lead to an over- estimation of trade. Design goods, such as interior, fashion, jewellery, and toys, dominate trade in creative goods based on the current UNCTAD product composition. To analyse if creative goods exports mask low or high value-added products would require more nuanced definitions and disaggregated data.
Services trade, including creative services, is becoming too important not to be measured. Services can be means for structural transformation and competitive advantage. To monitor and manage servicification countries need to be able to measure services. Better and more disaggregated data is required to gain more insights into the role of services in economic transformation and their potential for developing economies for services-led diversification.
Lack of data is a critical problem especially in developing economies. They face several challenges in quantifying services. They often lack the appropriate statistical infrastructure, including business registers to compile data. They do not have the institutional arrangements to let data compilers access multiple potential data sources and lack financial resources, IT infrastructure, and trained experts. Even if data exists, processing, formatting, and publishing them regularly may be challenging. There is a need for more funding and capacity building to strengthen countries’ statistical capabilities (Peltola, 2022).
International organisations are gathering statistics on services trade using national data and estimates.
The UNCTAD-WTO trade-in-services database serves as a basis for several of these efforts, together with the quarterly global trade in services nowcast. Other existing datasets include the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Balance of Payments statistics, OECD-WTO Balanced Trade in Services Statistics (BaTiS), and WTO trade in services data by mode of supply (TISMOS).
Moving forward, UNCTAD is currently active in two groups to facilitate further discussions on defining and measuring the creative economy. The two groups include the sub-group about clarification on cultural products resulting from creative industries within the Task Team on International Trade Statistics and the Informal Working Group on Creative Economy.
The Task Team on International Trade Statistics, facilitated by the United Nations Statistics Division, spearheads a joint research agenda on business and international trade statistics for the revision of trade- related statistical standards. UNESCO and UNCTAD are co-leading a sub-group for the clarification on cultural products resulting from creative industries. Working with UNIDO, WTO, and national experts the group works on issues such as clarifying the concepts of cultural and creative goods and services; delimiting cultural and creative goods for the purpose of trade statistics; rethinking the links between cultural and creative industries and goods; the impact of digitization on cultural and creative trade statistics; or the definition of handmade goods. The group will prepare a guidance note in 2022−2023, to be incorporated in the updated International Merchandise Trade Statistics Manual.
UNCTAD created an Informal Working Group on Creative Economy in April 2021. The working group brings together experts from developed and developing countries across the world to discuss evolving issues around the creative economy and the opportunities and challenges due to the changing economic, social and technological environment. The working group aims to review and potentially develop a new working definition of the creative economy and creative industries for UNCTAD. A synthesis report of the
group will be presented at an UNCTAD Ad Hoc Expert Meeting on Creative Economy and Sustainable Development in December 2022.
Both of these groups aim to encourage the dialogue between creative economy experts, statisticians and governments with the aim of increasing knowledge about the creative economy in developed and developing countries as well as about its measurement.
Regarding capacity building for better services trade statistics, the recent ninth session of UNCTAD’s Multi-Year Expert Meeting (MYEM) on Trade, Services and Development in July 2022 proposed to create an informal working group of services data experts to discuss data needs and identify gaps and potential funding opportunities in support of developing countries. Experts would be those engaged in services data collection and analysis in government statistical agencies, international organizations, and academia. The outcomes of the group will feed into individual sessions of the MYEM which in turn reports to UNCTAD’s Trade and Development Board (TDB) through the Trade and Development Commission.
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