Art Fakes - What Fakes? An Economic View

Bruno Frey

No 14, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: An economic analysis of fakes differs substantially from the legal and the art historic views which both tend to propose repressive policies against imitations. But there are large economic benefits from copying. In particular, the "propagation effect" yields utility to both consumers and creators of the original. In contrast, the harmful effects of fakes are small and are mitigated by emerging institutions (guarantees, sellers with reputation). The paper suggests "art quotations" (similar to academic quotations) as a beneficial solution to creators of originals and consumers. "Art quotations" are applicable to many art forms.

Keywords: Cultural Policy; art markets; art forgery; intellectual property rights; cultural industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K11 L23 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/51832/1/iewwp014.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:zur:iewwpx:014

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Severin Oswald ().