Age and the Quality of Work: The Case of Modern American Painters

David Galenson and Bruce Weinberg

Journal of Political Economy, 2000, vol. 108, issue 4, 761-777

Abstract: Psychologists have found that the age at which successful practitioners typically do their best work varies across professions, but they have not considered whether these peak ages change over time, as economic models suggest they might. Using auction records, we estimate the relationship between artists' ages and the value of their paintings for two successive cohorts of leading modern American painters: de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, and others born during 19001920 and Frank Stella, Warhol, and others born during 192140. We find that a substantial decline occurred over time in the age at which these artists produced their most valuableand most importantwork and argue that this was caused by a shift in the nature of the demand for modern art during the 1950s.

Date: 2000
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (90)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/316099 main text (application/pdf)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Age and the Quality of Work: The Case of Modern American Painters (1999)
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:ucp:jpolec:v:108:y:2000:i:4:p:761-777

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().