The Labor Market in the Seventeenth-Century Italian Art Sector

Federico Etro (), Silvia Marchesi and Laura Pagani

No 215, Working Papers from University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics

Abstract: We analyze the labor market for painters in Baroque Rome using unique panel data on primary sales of still lifes, portraits, genre paintings, landscapes and figurative paintings. In line with the traditional artistic hierarchy of genres, average price differentials between them were high. We identify supply and demand factors related to prices of paintings. The panel dimension of the dataset and its matched painter-patron nature allows us to evaluate the extent to which price heterogeneity is related to unobservable characteristics of painters and patrons. We find that most of the inter-genre price differential is explained by the variation in average artist heterogeneity across genres. This suggests that the market allocated artists between artistic genres to the point of equalizing the marginal return of each genre. We also explain residual price differences in terms of efficiency wage, signalling and incentive mechanisms to induce effort in the production of artistic quality.

Keywords: Art market; Occupational choice; Wage equalization; Signalling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 D8 J3 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2011-11, Revised 2011-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec.dems.unimib.it/repec/pdf/mibwpaper215.pdf First version, 2011 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Labor Market in the Seventeenth-Century Italian Art Sector (2011)
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:mib:wpaper:215

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Matteo Pelagatti ().