Estimating the Economic Boost of Marriage for Same-Sex Couples in Louisiana
Extending marriage to same-sex couples in Louisiana would generate an estimated $28.3 million in spending to the state economy. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the most recent data available, 8,076 same-sex couples live in Louisiana. Of those couples, the Institute estimates that fifty percent (4,038 couples) would choose to marry in the first three years, a pattern that has been observed in Massachusetts and elsewhere. The marriages that would occur in the first year alone would bring about $18.1 million in revenue to the state of Louisiana that year.
The Business Boost from Marriage Equality in Massachusetts: Evidence from the Health and Marriage Equality in Massachusetts Survey
This brief draws on two sources of data, a survey and state-collected tax revenue data, and finds that marriages have had a positive economic effect on Massachusetts – likely providing a boost of over $100 million to the state economy. Same-sex couples’ weddings injected significant spending into the Massachusetts economy and brought out-of-state guests to the state, whose spending also added to the economic boost.
Old topics, old approaches? ‘Reception’ in television studies and music studies
The question of reception is closely linked to the history and the roots of audience studies. But what is ‘reception’ and what exactly does it mean? As audience studies have developed from a contested novelty to a now established academic field, what do we do with a concept that defined our interests in the past and may now be too wide or even obsolete? This article deals with this issue by mapping how the concept of reception was conceptualized and researched in audience studies of the past ten years, with a focus on studies of music and studies of television. We find that in music, strong focus remains on music reception in the context of performances and events, and this lies in contrast to a small number of studies which instead focus on a framework of music in ordinary life and the audiences’ contextual localities. Concerning reception of television, much of the scholarship starts from the cultural studies tradition and looks at television viewing as a means to construct identities. Discussing these findings, we inquire whether the hybridization of media also implies a hybridization of research traditions and methodologies, and what consequences it has for the balance between textual, production and audience approaches.