Art is often used as an investment vehicle. Given the importance of market efficiency in finance, we use a large auction-based index to test whether the art market is weakly efficient. Evidence reveals that returns on artworks exhibit high positive auto-correlation. We attribute this result to...

The financial underperformance of art as an investment is well documented. In contrast to studies conducted on peace-time periods, this paper shows that the art market in occupied France during WWII significantly outperformed all alternative investments (bonds, equities, as well as currencies...

This article analyzes the problem of attracting investments into the Russian art market in the light of the main theories of management non-profit sector (the theory of "the production of public goods", the theory of "breach of contract" and the theory of "control stakeholders"). Based on a...

We analyze organization of auctions and bidding strategies with a unique dataset on Paris auctions between 700s and 800s. Prices reflect the objective features of the paintings and of the sale, and they reveal a substantial death effect, with upward jumps in the years after the death of the...

We analyze the evolution of the price of paintings in the XVII century Amsterdam art market to test a hypothesis of endogenous entry: higher profitability should attract more entry of painters, which in turn should lead to artistic innovations and more intense competition. We build a price index...

We analyze the price of paintings in Dutch inventories and auctions of the Golden Age. The econometric investigation emphasizes correlations between prices adjusted for inflation and characteristics of the paintings, of the painters, of the owners (job, religion, size of the house) and, in case...

Statistical methods are widely used for valuation (prediction of the value at sale or auction) of a unique object such as a work of art. The usual approach is estimation of a hedonic model for objects of a given class, such as paintings from a particular school or period, or in the context of...

We analyze the Paris art market between the government-controlled Salon as a centralized organization of art exhibition and the system liberalized by the Republican government based on competition between independent exhibitions. The jury of the old Salon decided on submissions with a bias...

We study return rates on art investment using a complete dataset on repeated sales for Old Master Paintings, Modern art and Contemporary art auctioned worldwide at Christie's and Sotheby's from 2000 to 2018. We show that return rates do not depend systematically on past prices or the place of...

This paper analyzes, on basis of an original database of close to 3 000 canvasses sold during the war in Drouot, the main French auction house, the evolution of the art market in occupied France. Based on hedonic regressions, it shows that by all standards the market experienced a massive boom....