The Italian economy at the time of Covid-19: CDP Briefs

The CDP Think Tank Briefs provide an overview of the economic and social trends caused by the Coronavirus emergency, investigating features and changes in the main production sectors.

The “Culture and Covid-19 Brief: some stylised facts” highlights the evolutions taking place in the world of culture, a broad, diverse sector, which inevitably saw many weaknesses emerge during the crisis generated by Covid-19.

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• The culture industry is a diverse and wide ranging sector with complicated boundaries and assessing its economic value is complex.
• At a European level, the cultural and creative industries sector contributes more than 5% to GDP. In Italy, this value rises to over 6%.
• Despite being extensive and unchallenged, Italian cultural heritage, with 55 UNESCO sites, is nevertheless under exploited, with far fewer visitor numbers than those recorded by international cultural attractions.
• The film industry also plays a particularly important role, with its excellence in the world and one of the highest multiplication effects: each euro of additional demand for audiovisual services generates 2 euros in the rest of the economy.
• The digital revolution, which is transforming the film industry with a huge increase in consumption on new online platforms, is slow to spread to the more traditional ways of experiencing cultural heritage.
• The Covid-19 pandemic revealed and amplified the fragility of cultural industries. Over 90% of the world's museums noted a period of inactivity; the global film industry lost around 10 billion dollars in the first few months of the year.
• In Italy, museums lost around 80 million euros; cinemas lost almost 120 million euros and musical performances lost 350 million euros.
• By contrast, digital channels remained active and recorded a real boom in subscriptions. In Italy, during the first weeks of lockdown, audiences grew by more than 100%.
• The more traditional segments of the cultural industry also exploited the potential of digital to keep their relationships with customers alive.
• The crisis caused by Covid-19 could be an opportunity to introduce digitalisation across the sector, which was struggling to take hold and which could enable the sector to respond to the needs of more flexible and personalised usage.