State of the Art: Economic Development Through the Lens of Paintings

Clément Gorin, Stephan Heblich and Yanos Zylberberg

No 33976, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper uses 627,369 paintings since 1400 to study how societies experienced major socioeconomic transformations. We develop computer vision algorithms to extract two signals from each artwork—emotional expression and visual indicators of material living standards—and validate them against modern measures of wellbeing and economic output. Our empirical analysis documents how populations experienced socioeconomic changes by exploiting variation in emotional and material signals within artists’ oeuvres and conditional on painting sub-genres. While both respond to shocks to living standards, such as climate or trade, emotional expression also varies with broader economic and institutional conditions, often without corresponding changes in material outcomes. These findings suggest that paintings provide a long-run measure of experienced welfare, complementing conventional indicators of economic performance.

JEL-codes: C45 O10 R11 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-his
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Working Paper: State of the Art: Economic Development Through the Lens of Paintings (2025)
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