IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_2213.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Price and Death

Author

Listed:
  • Jun-ichi Itaya
  • Heinrich Ursprung

Abstract

How does an artist’s death impact on the price of his or her works of art? We investigate this question in an infinite-horizon dynamic general equilibrium setting. Employing the open-loop Stackelberg equilibrium concept to describe the interactive behaviour of collectors and artists, we find that the art price remains at some well-defined "pseudo-competitive" level as long as the artist is alive. Only when the artist unexpectedly dies, the price increases on impact. This so-called death effect varies negatively with the artist’s age at death. If it is well known that an artist is ailing from some terminal illness and his or her death thus does not come as a surprise, the price of the ailing artist’s work increases when the news of the ailment is divulged; the price immediately jumps to the level which will prevail at the time when the artist dies.

Suggested Citation

  • Jun-ichi Itaya & Heinrich Ursprung, 2008. "Price and Death," CESifo Working Paper Series 2213, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2213
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp2213.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Bond, Eric W. & Samuelson, Larry, 1987. "The Coase conjecture need not hold for durable good monopolies with depreciation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 93-97.
    3. David Maddison & Anders Jul Pedersen, 2008. "The death effect in art prices: evidence from Denmark," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 40(14), pages 1789-1793.
    4. Victor Ginsburgh & David Throsby, 2006. "Handbook of the economics of art and culture," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/1673, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    5. repec:bla:econom:v:64:y:1997:i:253:p:137-54 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Andrew C. Worthington & Helen Higgs, 2004. "Art as an investment: risk, return and portfolio diversification in major painting markets," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 44(2), pages 257-271, July.
    7. Ginsburgh, Victor & Mei, Jianping & Moses, Michael, 2006. "The Computation of Prices Indices," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 27, pages 947-979, Elsevier.
    8. BAUWENS, Luc & GINSBURGH, Victor, 2000. "Art experts and auctions are pre-sale estimates unbiased and fully informative?," LIDAM Reprints CORE 1485, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    9. Karp, Larry, 1996. "Depreciation erodes the Coase Conjecture," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 473-490, February.
    10. Nancy L. Stokey, 1981. "Rational Expectations and Durable Goods Pricing," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(1), pages 112-128, Spring.
    11. Olivier Chanel & Louis-André Gérard-Varet & Victor Ginsburgh, 1996. "The relevance of hedonic price indices," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 20(1), pages 1-24, March.
    12. David Galenson, 2009. "Old masters and young geniuses: The two life cycles of human creativity," Journal of Applied Economics, Universidad del CEMA, vol. 12, pages 1-9, May.
    13. Chanel, O. & Gerard, L.A. & Ginsburgh, V., 1992. "The Relevence of Hedonic Price Indices the Case of Paintings," G.R.E.Q.A.M. 92a19, Universite Aix-Marseille III.
    14. Buiter, Willem H, 1984. "Saddlepoint Problems in Continuous Time Rational Expectations Models: A General Method and Some Macroeconomic Examples," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 665-680, May.
    15. Baumol, William J, 1986. "Unnatural Value: Or Art Investment as Floating Crap Game," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 10-14, May.
    16. Corinna Czujack, 1997. "Picasso Paintings at Auction, 1963–1994," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 21(3), pages 229-247, September.
    17. Pesando, James E, 1993. "Art as an Investment: The Market for Modern Prints," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1075-1089, December.
    18. Coase, Ronald H, 1972. "Durability and Monopoly," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages 143-149, April.
    19. Karp, Larry, 1995. "Depreciation Erodes the Coase Conjecture," Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series qt1fs6j5nn, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley.
    20. Jianping Mei & Michael Moses, 2002. "Art as an Investment and the Underperformance of Masterpieces," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1656-1668, December.
    21. Kahn, Charles M, 1986. "The Durable Goods Monopolist and Consistency with Increasing Costs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(2), pages 275-294, March.
    22. Victor Ginsburgh & Jianping Mei & Michael Moses, 2006. "On the computation of art indices in art," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/7290, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    23. R. Ekelund & Rand Ressler & John Watson, 2000. "The ``Death-Effect'' in Art Prices: A Demand-Side Exploration," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 24(4), pages 283-300, November.
    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. 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.
    2. Galbraith, John W. & Hodgson, Douglas J., 2012. "Dimension reduction and model averaging for estimation of artists' age-valuation profiles," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 422-435.
    3. Dibooglu, Selahattin, 1996. "Real disturbances, relative prices and purchasing power parity," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 69-87.

    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. Itaya, Jun-ichi & Ursprung, Heinrich W., 2016. "Price and death: modeling the death effect in art price formation," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 431-445.
    2. Ventura Charlin & Arturo Cifuentes, 2013. "A new financial metric for the art market," Papers 1309.6929, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2015.
    3. 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.
    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. 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.
    6. Bronwyn Coate & Tim R.L. Fry, 2012. "Better off Dead? Prices Realised for Australian Paintings Sold at Auction," ACEI Working Paper Series AWP-02-2012, Association for Cultural Economics International, revised Feb 2012.
    7. Bocart, Fabian & Hafner, Christian, 2012. "Volatility of price indices for heterogeneous goods," LIDAM Discussion Papers ISBA 2012019, Université catholique de Louvain, Institute of Statistics, Biostatistics and Actuarial Sciences (ISBA).
    8. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2012-039 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Nauro F. Campos & Renata Leite Barbosa, 2009. "Paintings and numbers: an econometric investigation of sales rates, prices, and returns in Latin American art auctions," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 61(1), pages 28-51, January.
    10. Prieto-Rodriguez, Juan & Vecco, Marilena, 2021. "Reading between the lines in the art market: Lack of transparency and price heterogeneity as an indicator of multiple equilibria," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    11. Michel Clement & Anke Lepthien & Tim Schulze, 2016. "Erfolgsfaktoren bei der Vermarktung von Kunst [Success Factors for Marketing of Arts]," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 68(4), pages 377-400, December.
    12. Marinelli, Nicoletta & Palomba, Giulio, 2011. "A model for pricing Italian Contemporary Art paintings at auction," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 212-224, May.
    13. Kräussl, Roman & Elsland, Niels van, 2008. "Constructing the true art market index: A novel 2-step hedonic approach and its application to the German art market," CFS Working Paper Series 2008/11, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    14. Patrick Georges & Aylin Seçkin, 2013. "Black notes and white noise: a hedonic approach to auction prices of classical music manuscripts," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 37(1), pages 33-60, February.
    15. William N. Goetzmann & Luc Renneboog & Christophe Spaenjers, 2011. "Art and Money," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 222-226, May.
    16. Patrick Georges & Aylin Seçkin, 2012. "Auction Prices of Classical Music Manuscripts – A Hedonic Approach," Working Papers 1202E, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    17. Régis Blazy & Marie Blum, 2022. "Horizontal and vertical differentiation in comic art auctions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(3), pages 1382-1415, July.
    18. Helen Higgs & John Forster, 2014. "The auction market for artworks and their physical dimensions: Australia—1986 to 2009," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 38(1), pages 85-104, February.
    19. Petrov, Nikita & Ratnikova, Tatiana, 2017. "The price index for the paintings of Henri Matisse: The sensitivity to the method of construction and connection with stock market and art indices," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 47, pages 49-73.
    20. Jenny Rae Hawkins & Viplav Saini, 2014. "Returns on Indian Art during 2000-2013," ACEI Working Paper Series AWP-03-2014, Association for Cultural Economics International, revised Jun 2014.
    21. Bocart, Fabian Y.R.P. & Hafner, Christian M., 2012. "Econometric analysis of volatile art markets," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 56(11), pages 3091-3104.

    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:ces:ceswps:_2213. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.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.