IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cue/wpaper/awp-07-2015.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Death, Bereavement, And Creativity

Author

Listed:
  • Kathryn Graddy

    (Department of Economics, International Business School, Brandeis University)

Abstract

Does creativity, on average, increase or decrease during bereavement? Dates of death of relatives and close friends of 33 French artists and 15 American artists were gathered from electronic sources and biographies, and information on over 15,000 paintings was collected from Blouin's Art Sales Index and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's online collection, including over 12,000 observations on price. To preview the results, an event study indicates that prices of paintings decrease by over one-third on average in the two years following the death of a friend or relative. Furthermore, paintings that were created during this bereavement period are less likely to be included in the Met's collection.

Suggested Citation

  • Kathryn Graddy, 2015. "Death, Bereavement, And Creativity," ACEI Working Paper Series AWP-07-2015, Association for Cultural Economics International, revised Jul 2015.
    • Handle: RePEc:cue:wpaper:awp-07-2015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://files.culturaleconomics.org/papers/AWP-07-2015.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Graddy, Kathryn, 2013. "Taste Endures! The Rankings of Roger de Piles (†1709) and Three Centuries of Art Prices," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 73(3), pages 766-791, September.
    2. David W. Galenson & Bruce A. Weinberg, 2000. "Age and the Quality of Work: The Case of Modern American Painters," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(4), pages 761-777, August.
    3. David W. Galenson & Bruce A. Weinberg, 2001. "Creating Modern Art: The Changing Careers of Painters in France from Impressionism to Cubism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 1063-1071, September.
    4. Karol Jan Borowiecki, 2017. "How Are You, My Dearest Mozart? Well-Being and Creativity of Three Famous Composers Based on Their Letters," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(4), pages 591-605, July.
    5. Pierre Azoulay & Joshua S. Graff Zivin & Jialan Wang, 2010. "Superstar Extinction," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(2), pages 549-589.
    6. David W. Galenson & Simone Lenzu, 2016. "Pricing Genius: The Market Evaluation of Innovation," Journal of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2), pages 219-248, November.
    7. Andrew J. Oswald & Eugenio Proto & Daniel Sgroi, 2015. "Happiness and Productivity," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(4), pages 789-822.
    8. Bang Dang Nguyen & Kasper Meisner Nielsen, 2014. "What Death Can Tell: Are Executives Paid for Their Contributions to Firm Value?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(12), pages 2994-3010, December.
    9. Victor Ginsburgh & Sheila Weyers, 2006. "Creativity and Life Cycles of Artists," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 30(2), pages 91-107, September.
    10. Alan Beggs & Kathryn Graddy, 1997. "Declining Values and the Afternoon Effect: Evidence from Art Auctions," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(3), pages 544-565, Autumn.
    11. Corak, Miles, 2001. "Death and Divorce: The Long-Term Consequences of Parental Loss on Adolescents," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(3), pages 682-715, July.
    12. Victor Ginsburgh & Sheila Weyers, 2006. "Creation and life cycles of artists," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/5257, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    13. Orley Ashenfelter & Kathryn Graddy, 2003. "Auctions and the Price of Art," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(3), pages 763-787, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Borowiecki, Karol Jan & Graddy, Kathryn, 2021. "Immigrant artists: Enrichment or displacement?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 785-797.
    2. Karol Jan Borowiecki & Caterina Adelaide Mauri, 2024. "Originality, influence, and success: a model of creative style," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 48(2), pages 221-258, June.
    3. Marchenko, Maria & Sonnabend, Hendrik, 2022. "The Never Ending Book: The role of external stimuli and peer feedback in user-generated content production," Department of Economics Working Paper Series 320, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert B. Ekelund & John D. Jackson & Robert D. Tollison, 2013. "Are Art Auction Estimates Biased?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 80(2), pages 454-465, October.
    2. Jose Sanchez-Fung, 2019. "Examining the life-cycle artistic productivity of Latin American photographers," ACEI Working Paper Series AWP-05-2019, Association for Cultural Economics International, revised Dec 2019.
    3. John Galbraith & Douglas Hodgson, 2015. "Innovation, experience and artists’ age-valuation profiles: evidence from eighteenth-century rococo and neoclassical painters," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 39(3), pages 259-275, August.
    4. Douglas J. Hodgson & Christiane Hellmanzik, 2019. "Relationships between artistic movements and careers of modern artists: evidence from hedonic regressions with auction data," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 43(2), pages 309-337, June.
    5. Etro, Federico & Stepanova, Elena, 2021. "Art return rates from old master paintings to contemporary art," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 94-116.
    6. Christiane Hellmanzik, Department of Economics and IIIS, Trinity College Dublin, 2009. "Artistic Clusters and Modern Artists’ Mobility - An Empirical Study," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp296, IIIS.
    7. Zanola, Roberto & Vecco, Marilena & Jones, Andrew, 2021. "A place for everything and everything in its place: New York's role in the art market," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 215-224.
    8. Borowiecki, Karol Jan & Dahl, Christian Møller, 2021. "What makes an artist? The evolution and clustering of creative activity in the US since 1850," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    9. Robert B. Ekelund & John D. Jackson & Robert D. Tollison, 2015. "Age and productivity: An empirical study of early American artists," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 81(4), pages 1096-1116, April.
    10. Hellmanzik, Christiane, 2010. "Location matters: Estimating cluster premiums for prominent modern artists," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 199-218, February.
    11. Kliger, Doron & Raviv, Yaron & Rosett, Joshua & Bayer, Thomas & Page, John, 2015. "Seasonal affective disorder and seasoned art auction prices: New evidence from old masters," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 74-84.
    12. Hellmanzik, Christiane, 2013. "Democracy and economic outcomes: Evidence from the superstars of modern art," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 58-69.
    13. Karol Jan BOROWIECKI, 2011. "War and Creativity: Solving the War-Art Puzzle for Classical Music Composition," Trinity Economics Papers tep0711, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.
    14. Kaltenberg, Mary & Jaffe, Adam B. & Lachman, Margie E., 2023. "Invention and the life course: Age differences in patenting," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(1).
    15. 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.
    16. Orley Ashenfelter & Kathryn Graddy, 2011. "Art Auctions," Chapters, in: Ruth Towse (ed.), A Handbook of Cultural Economics, Second Edition, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Karol Jan Borowiecki & Nicholas Martin Ford & Maria Marchenko, 2023. "Harmonious relations: quality transmission among composers in the very long run," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 27(3), pages 454-476.
    18. Hellmanzik, Christiane, 2016. "Historic art exhibitions and modern - day auction results," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 421-430.
    19. Heinrich Ursprung & Katarina Zigova, 2020. "Diff-in-Diff in Death: Estimating and Explaining Artist-Specific Death Effects," CESifo Working Paper Series 8181, CESifo.
    20. Christiane Hellmanzik, 2013. "Does travel inspire? Evidence from the superstars of modern art," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 281-303, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Auctions; economics of art;

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics

    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:cue:wpaper:awp-07-2015. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Paul Crosby (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aceiiea.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.