Psychologists have found that the age at which successful practitioners typically do their best work varies across professions, but they have not considered whether these peak ages change over time, as economic models suggest they might. Using auction records, we estimate the relationship...

We empirically analyze the illicit trade in cultural property and antiques, taking advantage of different reporting incentives between source and destination countries. We thus generate a measure of illicit trafficking in these goods based on the difference between imports recorded in United...

The recent history of modern art provides clues as to how important artists can be identified before their work becomes generally known. Advanced art has been dominated by conceptual innovators since the late 1950s, and the importance of formal art education in the training of leading artists...

American historians of modern art routinely assume that after World War II New York replaced Paris as the center of the western art world. An analysis of the illustrations in French textbooks shows that French art scholars disagree: they rate Jean Dubuffet as the most important painter of the...

While both cultural and legal norms (institutions) help foster cooperation, culture is the more primitive of the two and itself sustains formal institutions. Cultural changes are rarer and slower than changes in legal institutions, which makes it difficult to identify the role played by culture....

This paper examines how government funding programs geared towards early-stage companies interact with private capital markets. Using hand-collected data on 755 government programs worldwide, we find that governments' allocations to such funding programs have been comparable to global venture...

In this paper we explore whether or not the experience as a founder of a venture capital-backed startup influences the performance of founders who become venture capitalists (VCs). We find that nearly 7% of VCs were previously founders of a venture-backed startup. Having a successful exit and...