RULES FOR AN EMERGENT MARKET: Selling paintings in late seventeenth-century London

Neil De Marchi

No 02-33, Working Papers from Duke University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Conditions of sale were a feature of the Roman auction, and probably published along with the written public announcement, the proscriptio , that preceded a sale. When such conditions appeared on the front pages of printed sale catalogues for paintings, prints and drawings in late seventeenth-century London, then, this was nothing new; but the rules themselves were almost certainly modified to fit the circumstances then prevailing. Here I wish to examine those rules and explore the rationale for either modifying traditional elements among them or introducing some for - it seems - the first time. I will also use the exploration as an occasion to conduct two additional probes. One of these will be into the likely level and structure of prices in these early London sales, the inquiry into structure revealing that many sales were two-in-one, appealing to dual audiences. The other probe will show that the market was also segmented by quality and location, which must have restricted the possibilities for immediate profitable resale and thus the likelihood that individuals' bids were influenced by those of others.

Date: 2002
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-his
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.duke.edu/Papers/Abstracts02/abstract.02.33.html main text

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:duk:dukeec:02-33

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Duke University, Department of Economics Department of Economics Duke University 213 Social Sciences Building Box 90097 Durham, NC 27708-0097.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Department of Economics Webmaster ().