Returns on Indian Art during 2000-2013

Jenny Hawkins () and Viplav Saini
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Jenny Hawkins: Department of Economics, Oberlin College

No AWP-03-2014, ACEI Working Paper Series from Association for Cultural Economics International

Abstract: The market for modern Indian art is an emerging art market, having come into a proper existence only in the late 1990s. This market saw tremendous growth in its initial years and then a downturn that started around 2007-2008. Using data from auctions conducted by a major Indian art auctioneer, we estimate via hedonic regression a price index for paintings and drawings by Indian artists sold during 2000-2013. We are able to thus estimate a rate of return on Indian art as an investment and also shed light on what drives the price of a painting in the Indian market. In doing so, we document quantitatively the extent of the rise and fall in Indian art prices. We also distinguish empirically two segments in the Indian art market, namely modern painters and contemporary painters, who appear to command different prices at auction. We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between the state of the Indian stock market and art auction prices. Finally, we use our econometric results to construct a ranking of Indian painters in terms of the market prices for their work.

Keywords: art; auction; India; price index; hedonic regression (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C20 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2014-06, Revised 2014-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul
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