The book, edited by Ilde Rizzo and Ruth Towse, is dedicated to the memory of Professor Sir Alan Peacock, with whom the editors and many of the contributors have collaborated. Alan was one of the first people to work in cultural economics and made seminal contributions to a range of topics in the field. The book is a tribute to him in the form of a reevaluation of that body of work. Beyond that , he was one of the most prominent economists of his generation and made important contributions to public finance and welfare economics. He was also involved on high level arts management as Chairman of the Scottish Arts Council and other bodies and most prominently, author of the 1986 Peacock Report on the future of broadcasting in the UK, as Chairman of the inquiry.

The Artful Economst: A New Look at Cultural Economics is published by Springer.