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Cultural institutions are the main beneficiaries of public funds for culture. However, cultural policies suffer from 'adhocism' in the administration of institutions, which are often publicly owned and receive little recognition of the benefits that society gains from their use. The aim of this study is to provide the measurement of the use value of access to cultural institutions. Based on the observed individual attendances and their costs, a two-stage budgeting model is employed to estimate the change in consumer surplus related to the loss of access to cinemas, museums, and theatres in Warsaw, Poland. It is the first non-market valuation of cinemas in the existing literature. The inclusion of institutions' entire markets helps to overcome the bias caused by the embedding effect and the availability of substitutes, which affects many single-site valuations. The estimated use values are compared with the subsidies received by the three groups of cultural institutions. Results reveal substantial benefits provided by cinemas, although cinemas are nearly excluded from the circulation of public support. The estimated use value is enough to justify subsidies for both highly subsidised sectors of museums and theatres. The estimation of use values serves as a starting point for the evaluation of the use of public resources.

The aim of this paper is to bring new contributions to the analysis of efficiency and productivity in the performing arts. First, we consider that the behavior of a performing arts company can be analyzed under a multi-output technology of production, since they offer different products in terms of quantity and quality. Second, and for the first time to the best of our knowledge, we propose a procedure to measure the marginal costs associated with the production of performing arts firms. To achieve our goals, we estimate a stochastic input distance function to a set of nineteen public municipal theatres in Warsaw during the period 2000-2012. Additionally, we calculate the technical efficiency indices for these theatres and characterize some determinants of their efficiency, paying special attention to the effect of public grants. Our findings suggest that those municipal theatres in Warsaw could have used 7% less inputs to achieve the same level of outputs. At the same time, the presence of public grants improves efficiency and, so, contributes to extend novelty and diversity. The marginal cost of a new performance is around 7,149 PLN; and introducing a new title costs up to 3.33 times more than staging one title already established in the repertoire.

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An interdisciplinary study of metallic objects from selected archaeological sites in Poland was performed. The aim of the project was to obtain information about the chemical composition and structural changes of the objects. Furthermore, the research results provided information about the technological process which was used to manufacture the artifacts. The materials research had a non-and micro-invasive character which is very important in this type of investigation. The main experimental tools were particle-induced X-ray emission supplemented with nuclear reaction thermal neutron (white beam) radiography, scanning electron microscopy with X-ray energy dispersive analysis, and laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry techniques. The results show that the artifacts were made by a secondary smelting process used in local metallurgy manufactures.