IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cue/wpaper/awp-03-2011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The 1980s Price Bubble on (Post) Impressionism

Author

Listed:
  • Fabian Bocart

    (Universite Catholique de Louvain, Institut de Statistique, Biostatistique et Sciences Actuarielles, Voie du Roman Pays 20, 1348 Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium)

  • Ken Bastiaensen
  • Peter Cauwels

    (ETH Zurich, Department of Management, Technology, and Economics, Zurich, Switzerland)

Abstract

The Log Periodic Power Law is a model used to define and measure speculative bubbles. This model has proven useful to track bubbles and even predict crashes of liquid asset classes. Using this methodology coupled with properties of cointegration between stocks and art, the 1980s price bubble on Impressionism and Post-Impressionism is analyzed. It is shown formally that there was a bubble in this market between 1986 and 1989. However, when denominating the art index in JPY rather than in USD, no price bubble behaviour was found at all. This observation suggests that Japanese buyers never felt that they were riding a bubble. Despite popular beliefs, no evidence is found that Japanese buyers viewed art as a speculative vehicle instead of a more classic consumption good that was related to their own cultural heritage.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabian Bocart & Ken Bastiaensen & Peter Cauwels, 2011. "The 1980s Price Bubble on (Post) Impressionism," ACEI Working Paper Series AWP-03-2011, Association for Cultural Economics International, revised Nov 2011.
    • Handle: RePEc:cue:wpaper:awp-03-2011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://files.culturaleconomics.org/papers/AWP-03-2011.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lei, Vivian & Noussair, Charles N & Plott, Charles R, 2001. "Nonspeculative Bubbles in Experimental Asset Markets: Lack of Common Knowledge of Rationality vs. Actual Irrationality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(4), pages 831-859, July.
    2. Victor Ginsburgh & David Throsby, 2006. "Handbook of the economics of art and culture," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/1673, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    4. Jiang, Zhi-Qiang & Zhou, Wei-Xing & Sornette, Didier & Woodard, Ryan & Bastiaensen, Ken & Cauwels, Peter, 2010. "Bubble diagnosis and prediction of the 2005-2007 and 2008-2009 Chinese stock market bubbles," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 149-162, June.
    5. B. Roehner & D. Sornette, 1999. "Analysis Of The Phenomenon Of Speculative Trading In One Of Its Basic Manifestations: Postage Stamp Bubbles," International Journal of Modern Physics C (IJMPC), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 10(06), pages 1099-1116.
    6. 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.
    7. William N. Goetzmann & Luc Renneboog & Christophe Spaenjers, 2011. "Art and Money," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 222-226, May.
    8. Douglas J. Hodgson & Keith P. Vorkink, 2004. "Asset pricing theory and the valuation of Canadian paintings," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(3), pages 629-655, August.
    9. Renneboog, Luc & Ter Horst, Jenke & Zhang, Chendi, 2011. "Is ethical money financially smart? Nonfinancial attributes and money flows of socially responsible investment funds," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 562-588, October.
    10. repec:adr:anecst:y:1994:i:35:p:06 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Victor Ginsburgh & N. Schwed, 1992. "Price trends for old masters' drawings, 1980-1991," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/99302, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    12. Douglas Hodgson & Keith Vorkink, 2004. "Asset pricing theory and the valuation of Canadian paintings," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 37(3), pages 629-655, August.
    13. Andrew C. Worthington & Helen Higgs, 2001. "Art as an Investment: Risk, Return and Comovements in Major Painting Markets," School of Economics and Finance Discussion Papers and Working Papers Series 093, School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology.
    14. Kenneth Wieand & Jeff Donaldson & Socorro Quintero, 1998. "Are Real Assets Priced Internationally? Evidence from the Art Market," Multinational Finance Journal, Multinational Finance Journal, vol. 2(3), pages 167-187, September.
    15. Blanchard, Olivier Jean, 1979. "Speculative bubbles, crashes and rational expectations," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 387-389.
    16. Bertrand Roehner & D. Sornette, 1999. "Analysis of the phenomenon of speculative trading in one of its basic manifestations: postage stamp bubbles," Papers cond-mat/9906435, arXiv.org.
    17. Leslie Singer & Gary Lynch, 1997. "Are Multiple Art Markets Rational?," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 21(3), pages 197-218, September.
    18. Phillips, Peter C B & Ouliaris, S, 1990. "Asymptotic Properties of Residual Based Tests for Cointegration," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(1), pages 165-193, January.
    19. 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.
    20. 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.
    21. K. Bastiaensen & P. Cauwels & D. Sornette & R. Woodard & W. -X. Zhou, 2009. "The Chinese Equity Bubble: Ready to Burst," Papers 0907.1827, arXiv.org.
    22. Smith, Vernon L & Suchanek, Gerry L & Williams, Arlington W, 1988. "Bubbles, Crashes, and Endogenous Expectations in Experimental Spot Asset Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1119-1151, September.
    23. Chris Brooks & Apostolos Katsaris, 2003. "Rational Speculative Bubbles: An Empirical Investigation of the London Stock Exchange," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(4), pages 319-346, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. 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).
    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.
    3. 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.
    4. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2012-039 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Joonwoo Nahm, 2010. "Price determinants and genre effects in the Korean art market: a partial linear analysis of size effect," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 34(4), pages 281-297, November.
    6. Douglas Hodgson & Aylin Seçkin, 2012. "Dynamic price dependence of Canadian and international art markets: an empirical analysis," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 43(2), pages 867-890, October.
    7. 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).
    8. David, Géraldine & Li, Yuexin & Oosterlinck, Kim & Renneboog, Luc, 2021. "Art in Times of Crisis," Discussion Paper 2021-026, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    9. Alessia Crotta & Filip Vermeylen, 2020. "Does nudity sell? An econometric analysis of the value of female nudity in Modigliani portraits," ACEI Working Paper Series AWP-02-2020, Association for Cultural Economics International, revised Dec 2020.
    10. Hüsler, A. & Sornette, D. & Hommes, C.H., 2013. "Super-exponential bubbles in lab experiments: Evidence for anchoring over-optimistic expectations on price," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 304-316.
    11. Kompa Krzysztof & Witkowska Dorota, 2014. "Construction Of Hedonic Price Index For The “Most Liquid” Polish Painters," Folia Oeconomica Stetinensia, Sciendo, vol. 14(2), pages 76-100, December.
    12. Dimson, Elroy & Spaenjers, Christophe, 2011. "Ex post: The investment performance of collectible stamps," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 443-458, May.
    13. Fur, Eric Le, 2021. "Fine Wines in a Diversified Portfolio of Collectibles," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315852, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    14. 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.
    15. Spaenjers, C., 2011. "Essays in alternative investments," Other publications TiSEM 8c51041f-6a63-451f-b7f4-8, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    16. Hellmanzik, Christiane, 2016. "Historic art exhibitions and modern - day auction results," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 421-430.
    17. Roman Kraeussl & Christian Wiehenkamp, 2012. "A call on art investments," Review of Derivatives Research, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 1-23, April.
    18. Emrah Çevik & Erdal Atukeren & Turhan Korkmaz, 2013. "Nonlinearity and nonstationarity in international art market prices: evidence from Markov-switching ADF unit root tests," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 675-695, October.
    19. Dorota Witkowska, 2014. "An Application of Hedonic Regression to Evaluate Prices of Polish Paintings," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 20(3), pages 281-293, August.
    20. Michael Hutter & Christian Knebel & Gunnar Pietzner & Maren Schäfer, 2007. "Two games in town: a comparison of dealer and auction prices in contemporary visual arts markets," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 31(4), pages 247-261, December.
    21. Tolhurst, Tor N., 2018. "A Model-Free Bubble Detection Method: Application to the World Market for Superstar Wines," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274387, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Impressionism; art market; hedonic regression; LPPL; bubble;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G1 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets
    • G17 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Financial Forecasting and Simulation
    • Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature

    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-03-2011. 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.