The Labor Market in the Art Sector of Baroque Rome

Federico Etro (), Silvia Marchesi and Laura Pagani

No AWP-03-2013, ACEI Working Paper Series from Association for Cultural Economics International

Abstract: We analyze the labor market for painters in Baroque Rome using unique panel data on primary sales of portraits, still lifes, genre paintings, landscapes and figurative paintings. In line with the traditional artistic hierarchy of genres, average price differentials between them were high. The matched painter-patron nature of the dataset allows us to evaluate the extent to which price heterogeneity is related to unobservable characteristics of painters and patrons. We find that the market allocated artists between artistic genres to the point of equalizing the marginal return of each genre. We explain residual price differences at the employer level in terms of incentive mechanisms to induce effort in the production of artistic quality and compensating wage differentials.

Keywords: Inter-industry wage differentials; Matched employer-employee data; Occupational choice; Art market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D8 J3 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2013-09, Revised 2013-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul, nep-eur, nep-his and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: THE LABOR MARKET IN THE ART SECTOR OF BAROQUE ROME (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cue:wpaper:awp-03-2013

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