IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sol/wpaper/2013-103479.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

War, Inflation, Monetary Reforms and the Art Market .The Belgian Art market (1944 – 1951)

Author

Listed:
  • Geraldine David
  • Kim Oosterlinck

Abstract

During World War II, the art market experienced a massive boom in occupied countries. The discretion, the inflation proof character, the absence of market intervention and the possibility to resell artworks abroad have been suggested to explain why investing in artworks was one of the most interesting opportunities under the German boot. On basis of an original database of close to 4000 artworks sold between 1944 and 1951 at Giroux, one of the most important Art Gallery in Brussels, this paper analyzes, the price movements on the Belgian art market following the liberation. Market reactions following the war are used to understand which motivations played the most important role in investors’ decisions. Prices on the art market experienced a massive drop. This huge price decline is attributed to two elements: fear of prosecution for war profits and the monetary reforms set into place in October 1944.

Suggested Citation

  • Geraldine David & Kim Oosterlinck, 2011. "War, Inflation, Monetary Reforms and the Art Market .The Belgian Art market (1944 – 1951)," Working Papers CEB 11-055, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    • Handle: RePEc:sol:wpaper:2013/103479
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/103479/1/wp11055.pdf
    File Function: wp11055
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Jianping Mei & Michael Moses, 2005. "Vested Interest and Biased Price Estimates: Evidence from an Auction Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(5), pages 2409-2435, October.
    3. Kim Oosterlinck, 2010. "French Stock Exchanges and Regulation during World War II," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/142702, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    4. Kim Oosterlinck, 2009. "The Price of Degenerate Art," Working Papers CEB 09-031.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    5. Luc Renneboog, 2002. "The monetary appreciation of paintings: from realism to Magritte," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 26(3), pages 331-358, May.
    6. Kim Oosterlinck & Filippo Occhino & Eugene N. White, 2006. "How occupied France financed its own exploitation during WW2," Working Papers CEB 06-012.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    7. Carmen M. Reinhart & M. Belen Sbrancia1, 2015. "The liquidation of government debt," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 30(82), pages 291-333.
    8. Kang, Sung Won & Rockoff, Hugh, 2015. "Capitalizing patriotism: the Liberty loans of World War I," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 45-78, April.
    9. Oosterlinck, Kim, 2010. "French Stock exchanges and regulation during World War II1," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(2), pages 211-237, October.
    10. repec:ulb:ulbeco:2013/14429 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Occhino, Filippo & Oosterlinck, Kim & White, Eugene N., 2008. "How Much Can a Victor Force the Vanquished to Pay? France under the Nazi Boot," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(1), pages 1-45, March.
    12. 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.
    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. Matthieu Gilson & Kim Oosterlinck & Andrey Ukhov, 2015. "Time-Varying Risk Aversion during World War II: Evidence from Belgian Lottery Bond Prices," Working Papers CEB 15-031, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

    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. Geraldine David & Kim Oosterlinck, 2012. "War, Inflation, Monetary Reform and the Art Market," Working Papers 0012, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).
    2. David, Geraldine, 2016. "Art as an investment in a historical perspective," Other publications TiSEM 2361da4b-d827-4cae-91ce-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    3. Kim Oosterlinck, 2017. "Art as a Wartime Investment: Conspicuous Consumption and Discretion," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(607), pages 2665-2701, December.
    4. Georges Gallais-Hamonno & Thi-hong-van Hoang & Kim Oosterlinck, 2016. "Price Formation on Clandestine Markets: The Case of the Paris Gold Market during WWII," Working Papers CEB 16-048, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    5. Kim Oosterlinck & Jeremy Simon, 2015. "Financial Repression and Bond Market Efficiency: the Case of Italy during World War II," Working Papers CEB 15-001, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. William N. Goetzmann & Luc Renneboog & Christophe Spaenjers, 2011. "Art and Money," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 222-226, May.
    10. Fabian Y.R.P. Bocart & Eric Ghysels & Christian M. Hafner, 2020. "Monthly Art Market Returns," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-22, May.
    11. Gallais-Hamonno, Georges & Hoang, Thi-Hong-Van & Oosterlinck, Kim, 2015. "Informational efficiency of the clandestine and official gold markets in Paris," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 28-30.
    12. Georges Gallais‐Hamonno & Thi‐Hong‐Van Hoang & Kim Oosterlinck, 2019. "Price formation on clandestine markets: the case of the Paris gold market during the Second World War," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 72(3), pages 1048-1072, August.
    13. Assaf, Ata, 2018. "Testing for bubbles in the art markets: An empirical investigation," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 340-355.
    14. Urquhart, Andrew & Hudson, Robert, 2016. "Investor sentiment and local bias in extreme circumstances: The case of the Blitz," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 340-350.
    15. 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.
    16. Charlin, Ventura & Cifuentes, Arturo, 2013. "A new financial metric for the art market," MPRA Paper 50186, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. 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.
    18. Oosterlinck, Kim & David, Géraldine & Huemer, Christian, 2019. "Art Dealers’ Inventory Strategy The case of Goupil, Boussod & Valadon from 1860 to 1914," CEPR Discussion Papers 13941, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Patrick Georges & Aylin Seçkin, 2012. "Auction Prices of Classical Music Manuscripts – A Hedonic Approach," Working Papers 1202E, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    20. Calin Valsan & Robert Sproule, 2006. "Hedonic Models and Pre-Auction Estimates: Abstract Art Revisited," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 26(5), pages 1-10.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Art market; Art Investment; WWII; Belgium; Post-war; Monetary reforms;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N14 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: 1913-
    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-
    • 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:sol:wpaper:2013/103479. 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: Benoit Pauwels (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cebulbe.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.