IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ven/wpaper/2011_22.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Market for Paintings in XVII Century Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Federico Etro

    (Department of Economics, University Of Venice C� Foscari)

  • Laura Pagani

    (Department of Economics, University Of Milan, Bicocca)

Abstract

We study the XVII century market for figurative paintings in Italy, analyzing original contracts between patrons and artists: this is one of the first manufacturing markets for which econometric evidence of the basic laws of economics can be found. Size of paintings, expected quality, type of commissions and aggregate shocks affect prices as expected. We find evidence of contractual solutions to moral hazard problems in the patron-artist relation: since quality was not negotiable, prices were made conditional on correlated variables such as the number of figures depicted. We find evidence of price equalization between high and low demand destinations due to endogenous mobility of the painters (or the paintings). We also provide support for the Galenson hypothesis of a positive relation between age of experimental artists and quality as priced by the market.

Suggested Citation

  • Federico Etro & Laura Pagani, 2011. "The Market for Paintings in XVII Century Italy," Working Papers 2011_22, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    • Handle: RePEc:ven:wpaper:2011_22
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.unive.it/pag/fileadmin/user_upload/dipartimenti/economia/doc/Pubblicazioni_scientifiche/working_papers/2011/WP_DSE_etro_pagani_22_11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Art market; Moral hazard; Endogenous market structures; Galenson hypothesis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature
    • N0 - Economic History - - General
    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ven:wpaper:2011_22. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Geraldine Ludbrook (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dsvenit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.