We analyze the evolution of the price of paintings in the XVII century Amsterdam art market to test a hypothesis of endogenous entry: higher probability should attract more entry of painters, which in turn should lead to artistic innovations and more intense competition. We build a price index...

We analyze art pricing in a unique dataset on Madrid inventories between 1600 and 1750. Hedonic regressions reveal a number of interesting facts about the taste of Baroque Spanish collectors and the imports of foreign paintings. The hedonic price index shows an impressive increase in the price...

We study the XVII century market for figurative paintings in Italy, analyzing original contracts between patrons and artists: this is one of the first manufacturing markets for which econometric evidence of the basic laws of economics can be found. Size of paintings, expected quality, type of...

We analyze the labor market for painters in Baroque Rome using unique panel data on primary sales of still lifes, portraits, genre paintings, landscapes and figurative paintings. In line with the traditional hierarchy of genres, average price differentials between them were high. We identify...

We analyze organization of auctions and bidding strategies with a unique dataset on Paris auctions between 700s and 800s. Prices reflect the objective features of the paintings and of the sale, and they reveal a substantial death effect, with upward jumps in the years after the death of the...

We analyze the price of paintings in Dutch inventories and auctions of the Golden Age. The econometric investigation emphasizes correlations between prices adjusted for inflation and characteristics of the paintings, of the painters, of the owners (job, religion, size of the house) and, in case...

This paper studies the relationship between competition and incentives in an economy with financial contracts. We concentrate on non-exclusive credit relationships, those where an entrepreneur can simultaneously accept more than one contractual offer. Several homogeneous lenders compete on the...

We study the art market in the Venetian Republic from 1550 to 1750 analyzing the determinants of the prices (adjusted for the cost of living measured by the cost of wheat) of figurative paintings. Reputation of the painters, size of the paintings and other quantifiable factors affect prices as...

We study the impact of a General Purpose Technology that changes the cost structure turning fixed costs into variable ones in most sectors. A major recent example is cloud computing, whose adoption allows firms to avoid large up-front costs in IT and to rent computing capability online. We study...

I analyze the role of leadership in multi-sided markets as online advertising. Search and display advertising are better characterized by (respectively) quantity and price competition. A platform that reached dominance in search may have an incentive to limit services to consumers to be...