Bargaining over beauty: The economics of contracts in Renaissance art markets

Ennio Emanuele Piano and Clara E. Piano
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Ennio Emanuele Piano: Middle Tennessee State University

No 9b6c5, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: This paper argues that concerns over opportunism affected the content and structure of Renaissance art contracts. Building on insights from the economic analysis of contracts, we first show that opportunism threatened the relationship between buyer—the patron—and seller—the painter—in Renaissance Italy. We then test the effect of opportunism on the contracting process for paintings against a novel data set on the content and structure of ninety documents corresponding to as many commissions. Our results provide evidence that concerns over opportunism had a systematic effect on the trading parties’ choice of how much and what to include in the contract governing their ex-change.

Date: 2021-12-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-his
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:9b6c5

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/9b6c5

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