The nonprofit performing arts have received substantial attention in the cultural economics literature, and represent an interesting application for many areas of economic inquiry. This chapter surveys the relevant theory and the most prominent empirical studies on performing arts nonprofits....

In the standard neoclassical model consumers use all the available information and the demand for goods depends exclusively on preferences and prices whereas other spurious information do not play any role. In the market for books, we investigate if - in contrast to the standard model - the...

In the secondary art market, artists play no active role. This allows us to isolate cultural influences on the demand for female artists' work from supply-side factors. Using 1.5 million auction transactions in 45 countries, we document a 47.6% gender discount in auction prices for paintings....

Four types of economicsʺ relevant for institutional analysis are distinguished: Standard Neoclassical Economics; Socio-Economics or Social Economics; New Institutional Economics; and Psychological Economics (often misleadingly called Behavioural Economics). The paper argues that an extension of...

This paper analysis the global distribution of art collections and collectors' biases with respect to the origin of artworks. Employing a unique dataset we find that the greatest number of private art collections are located in Europe, North America and Asia. There are relatively few collections...

Several types of arguments advocate state involvement in the promotion of culture. Many of them imply some sort of subsidy, usually to non-for-profit firms; none favors taxing cultural events. The tax literature, on the other side, discusses excise taxation on culture only as a way to...

Art history may be at a turning point in the adoption of a quantitative approach typical of social sciences, and this book is a brilliant manifesto for this. It will be a fascinating reading for economic historians and cultural economists, and will hopefully foster interdisciplinary research,...

High market values and the recognition of its investment potential make art a potential source of collateral for loans. Recently, firms specializing in art lending have emerged to serve this market. This study explores the effect of regional variations in economic and financial conditions on...

Measuring the psychic return of art investments is a debated issue in Cultural economics. Several works suggest Jensen's alpha as a measure of the psychic return. Since the Jensen's alpha is defined in the CAPM framework, its uncritical application as a measure of the psychic return may be...

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...