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Is Art Really a Safe Haven? Evidence from the French Art Market During WWI

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  • Geraldine David

Abstract

During crisis art is often considered as a safe haven both by the scientific literature and the financial advisors. For example, during WWII art markets encountered a massive boom in occupied countries This paper questions this vision of art as a safe investment providing evidence that art has not always supplied a safe investing way during crisis. To do so it constructs, on basis of an original database of 22,000 entries, an art price index for the French art market during WWI and the postwar period in France (1911-1925). The results show that the WWII boom mostly reflected the specificities of the occupation economy imposed by the Nazis. Indeed during WWI artworks underperformed gold, real-estate, bonds and stocks in terms of risk-return performances. This underperformance can be explained by several peculiarities of the market. Investors tended to prefer cheap artworks and old masters during WWI as these were less volatile at the time.

Suggested Citation

  • Geraldine David, 2014. "Is Art Really a Safe Haven? Evidence from the French Art Market During WWI," Working Papers CEB 14-025, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/176148
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Unknown, 1967. "Index," 1967 Conference, August 21-30, 1967, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia 209796, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    2. Kim Oosterlinck, 2009. "The Price of Degenerate Art," Working Papers CEB 09-031.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Ginsburgh, Victor & Jeanfils, Philippe, 1995. "Long-term comovements in international markets for paintings," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(3-4), pages 538-548, April.
    4. Luc Renneboog & Christophe Spaenjers, 2013. "Buying Beauty: On Prices and Returns in the Art Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(1), pages 36-53, February.
    5. Helen Higgs & Andrew Worthington, 2005. "Financial Returns and Price Determinants in the Australian Art Market, 1973–2003," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 81(253), pages 113-123, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Sun, Qinglin & Zhang, Zhiyuan, 2023. "Can art hedge against economic policy uncertainty?: New insights through the NARDL model," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    2. Belma Öztürkkal & Aslı Togan-Eğrican, 2020. "Art investment: hedging or safe haven through financial crises," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 44(3), pages 481-529, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Art markets; Art investment; WWI; France; War; Postwar;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N14 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: 1913-
    • N24 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: 1913-
    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-
    • Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature

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