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State of the Art: Economic Development Through the Lens of Paintings

Author

Listed:
  • Clément Gorin
  • Stephan Heblich
  • Yanos Zylberberg

Abstract

This paper uses 627,369 paintings since 1400 to study how societies experienced major socioeconomic transformations. We develop computer vision algorithms to extract two signals from each artwork—emotional expression and visual indicators of material living standards—and validate them against modern measures of wellbeing and economic output. Our empirical analysis documents how populations experienced socioeconomic changes by exploiting variation in emotional and material signals within artists’ oeuvres and conditional on painting sub-genres. While both respond to shocks to living standards, such as climate or trade, emotional expression also varies with broader economic and institutional conditions, often without corresponding changes in material outcomes. These findings suggest that paintings provide a long-run measure of experienced welfare, complementing conventional indicators of economic performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Clément Gorin & Stephan Heblich & Yanos Zylberberg, 2025. "State of the Art: Economic Development Through the Lens of Paintings," NBER Working Papers 33976, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33976
    Note: DAE POL
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    Cited by:

    1. Sukjin Han & Kyungho Lee, 2025. "Copyright and Competition: Estimating Supply and Demand with Unstructured Data," Papers 2501.16120, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2025.
    2. Jacob Carlson, 2025. "Making Interpretable Discoveries from Unstructured Data: A High-Dimensional Multiple Hypothesis Testing Approach," Papers 2511.01680, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2026.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C45 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Neural Networks and Related Topics
    • O10 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - General
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics

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