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Reputation, Price, And Death: An Empirical Analysis Of Art Price Formation

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  • HEINRICH W. URSPRUNG
  • CHRISTIAN WIERMANN

Abstract

We analyze how an artist’s death influences the market prices of her works of art. Death has two opposing effects on art prices. By irrevocably restricting the artist’s oeuvre, prices, ceteris paribus, increase when the artist dies. On the other hand, an untimely death may well frustrate the collectors’ hopes of owning artwork that will, as the artist’s career progresses, become generally known and appreciated. By frustrating expected future name recognition, death impacts negatively on art prices. In conjunction, these two channels of influence give rise to a hump-shaped relationship between age at death and death-induced price changes. Using transactions from fine art auctions, we show that the empirically identified death effects indeed conform to our theoretical predictions. We derive our results from hedonic art price regressions, making use of a data set which exceeds the sample size of traditional studies in cultural economics by an order of magnitude.
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Suggested Citation

  • Heinrich W. Ursprung & Christian Wiermann, 2011. "Reputation, Price, And Death: An Empirical Analysis Of Art Price Formation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(3), pages 697-715, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:49:y:2011:i:3:p:697-715
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature

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