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

David Galenson and Bruce Weinberg

No 7122, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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 modern American painters. We find that a substantial decline occurred over time in the age at which these artists produced their most valuable - and most important - work, and argue that this was caused by a shift in the nature of the demand for modern art during the 1950s.

JEL-codes: J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ind
Note: LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published as Galenson, David W. and Bruce A. Weinberg. "Age And The Quality Of Work: The Case Of Modern American Painters," Journal of Political Economy, 2000, v108(4,Aug), 761-777.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7122.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:nbr:nberwo:7122

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7122

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().