Looking Behind the Scenes: An Assessment of the Interdependence of Brazilian Cultural Industries

How important is Brazil’s cultural industries to its economy? We provide an answer to this question by evaluating the interdependence of the cultural activities in the Brazilian production structure and its evolution over the last few years (2005 – 2009). To accomplish this, we disaggregate 13 cultural economic industries in the Brazilian input-output table and calculate several indexes, such as, the production multiplier, linkage indexes, fields of influence and extraction analysis. Results show that the only cultural sector with high links to other sectors in the production structure is Telecommunication, edition and news agencies and that this sector provides the greatest loss in output when removed from the economy. Moreover, the sectors Jewelry, music, instruments and toys, and Manufacture of telecommunication equipment have output multipliers higher than the average of the economy.