Using a unique hand collected dataset, comprising all artwork sales in Italy between 2006 and 2010, we test Rosen's and Adler's hypotheses in the modern and contemporary visual art market. We extract our measures of artist talent and fame from a set of observable artist-specific variables by...

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...

In this paper, we present a model for the marketability of a Tribal artwork and we test this model empirically using a unique hand-collected dataset, which comprises the worldwide Tribal art market auctions between 1999 and 2008. Our results show a significant relationship between the...

This note investigates price-formation mechanisms at work in the private art market. An analysis is provided on pricing of new artwork for the first sale. In a model with five different types of agents using a bargaining game approach, the artist's preferred market channel is identified. The...

Considering all transactions related to modern and contemporary visual artists mediated by galleries in Italy between 2007 and 2012, we find that artist brand depends positively on talent, consolidated fame and volatile fame. These three latent characteristics have different impacts on the brand...