Kalòs kai agathòs? government quality and cultural heritage in the regions of Europe

This paper uses panel data on over 200 regions of Europe during the years 2010–2015 to study the relationship between the quality of institutions and the capacity of local authorities and stakeholders to effectively protect and support cultural heritage, using new designations in the UNESCO World Heritage List as a proxy. Besides analyzing the spatial distribution of World Heritage sites across European regions, we test whether the location of a region matters for the chances of obtaining a new UNESCO designation by controlling for the stock of World Heritage in the surrounding regions, and whether low regional government quality is an obstacle to inclusion of sites into the List. While we can detect no significant spill-overs from the stock of World Heritage in surrounding regions, we find evidence that local government quality matters for the chances of a region gaining a UNESCO site designation.