The Market for Paintings in Paris between Rococ� and Romanticism

Federico Etro () and Elena Stepanova

Working Papers from Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari"

Abstract: 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 artists. Both the hedonic and repeated sale price indexes show a declining pattern for the relative price of paintings starting with the French Revolution. On this basis we analyze the emerging role and market power of art dealers and employ network theory to study whether they created rings to manipulate the outcome of the auctions for their profits. Dealers appear to have been divided into four main communities heavily trading between themselves and we find evidence of collusive behavior with lower hammer prices for buyers belonging to the same community of the dealers organizing the auction.

Keywords: Art market; Hedonic prices; Repeated sales price index; Network theory. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D4 N0 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 39
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-mkt
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ven:wpaper:2014:08

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