There's quite a list by now of factors that led the Minnesota
Orchestra to lock out the musicians union in October, from
changing tastes in music to the hangover from a deep recession.
But at the dispute's core is a fundamental problem long known to
economists as "Baumol's cost disease." The concept comes from
economist William Baumol, whose groundbreaking work studying the
arts in the 1960s with a Princeton University colleague led to
his simple observation that productivity gains in the performing
arts are all but impossible to achieve. When Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart finished his String Quartet No. 19 in 1785, his well-
known "Dissonance" piece, it took four skilled players to
perform it. It still does. Baumol was looking at productivity,
which is the measure of the output a worker produces. That can
be a car part or a frozen pizza or a musical performance. On the
goods-producing side of the economy, investments in technology
and other capital items, along with factors like increasing
skill, have driven produc