The December issue of Rivista di Politica Economica entitled 'The place of culture. industry, welfare, civil development' is online.

Our country is a place of culture. From the ancient Greco-Roman heritage to the Renaissance and beyond, with the highest number of Unesco sites in the world and deep-rooted traditions in all the arts, Italy is synonymous with culture. But what is the place of culture in our society and economy today?

It is not usual to dedicate a volume to a single sector. Of course, the reason for this issue of the Rivista di Politica Economica is that the field of cultural services and goods expresses to a large extent the identity of the society in which it is expressed and in which it carries out its activities, as well as contributing to the tangible and intangible well-being of the people involved in it as providers or users of cultural services.

Without any claim to exhaustiveness, this volume therefore presents a survey of the structure and recent evolution of the cultural sector in our country, as well as an albeit incomplete examination of important aspects related to the production and use of cultural services.

• In the first part of the book, the authors define context, metrics and some structural problems affecting the cultural sector.
• In the second part, we present a collection of contributions that delve into some specific, and in our opinion absolutely relevant, aspects of the economy of culture and the reflections and interconnections it has with many areas of Italian and European society.

Rivista di Politica Economica was founded in 1911 as 'Rivista delle società commerciali' and assumed its current name in 1921. It is one of Italy's oldest economic publications and has always welcomed analysis and research by scholars from different schools of thought.

In 2019, the journal is relaunched, on a six-monthly basis, in a new format and with a new purpose: in fact, it intends to perform a different function from that of the many academic journals accessed by many Italian researchers, written mainly in English, returning to its original function, which is to discuss economic policy issues, always with scientific rigour. The writings are in fact in Italian, shorter than an academic paper, and use a language that can be understood even by non-experts. Each issue is a monograph on a topic chosen through a continuous discussion between the editor and the Advisory Board. The magazine is accessible online on the Confindustria website.

For more information, the complete volume, divided into contributions, is available at the link https://www.confindustria.it/home/centro-studi/rivista-di-politica-economica/dettaglio?doc=RPE_il_posto_della_cultura_2023_2