Baptism by fire: did the creative class generate economic growth during the crisis?

Abstract

Scholars have long argued that creativity drives economic prosperity. Recently, much of this debate has revolved around the creative class. Most of this research, however, has been done during times of strong economic growth. What is the economic effect of the creative class after the financial crisis? Looking at regional unemployment variation in 2007–2011 against baseline unemployment in 2005, we study if specific subgroups within the creative class have different relationships with regional unemployment. Throughout the entire timeframe all of the creative subgroups are associated with lower unemployment. We conclude that creativity matters but the influence of each subsector is dependent on region size. Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.