[beefman]

Throughout history, the leading empire or nation (by GDP) has always had the best universities. Also the best music industry, the best visual arts, etc. Ok, that's just what GDP measures, so it's a bit tautological. (Or is it?)

It sure as hell isn't whatever policy these authors determined was most likely out of the 3 or 4 they considered using regression over a time period containing one observation of the dependent variable.

(Reading the abstract, it seems the above charactization is even generous.)

Hopefully the next great center of research will have higher standards for what is subsidized than we have in the U.S. today.

[anovikov]

Not really. Austro-Hungarian Empire was an undisputed leader in music and one of the top in visual arts too, while it's economy was absolutely sucking, and technologies terribly outdated.

[beefman]

You're referring to Vienna. It's broadly part of Europe and narrowly functions as its own city-state. Its intermediate allegiance may be less important.

It's long had outsized musical influence but was only the world leader in music during the classical period, roughly 1750-1820. This does not overlap Austria-Hungary. However, I don't know the economic output of the Habsburg monarchy relative to the rest of Europe, so it may still be an exception.