The discipline of economics has traditionally refused to study the behavior and achievements of specific individuals. Yet creativity – a primary source of the technological change that drives economic growth – is largely the domain of extraordinary individuals or small groups. For the first...

This paper debunks three persistent myths: that creativity is greatest in youth, that wisdom hinders creativity, and that every discipline has a single peak age of creativity. These myths systematically neglect the achievements of experimental innovators – including such figures as Charles...

Earlier work has established a strong positive relationship between a household's wealth and its duration in the local economy. This paper explores the possible connection between the magnitude of this wealth/duration relationship and the community's precedence rate--the percentage of households...

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...

Using transactions from fine art auctions for 42 leading American contemporary artists I estimate the relationship between the value of a painting and the artist's age at the date of its execution. The econometric estimates show that artists born before 1920 were likely to have done their most...

Modern painting began in France during the nineteenth century. Using transactions from art auctions for the work of 50 leading painters who worked in France during the first century of modern art, I estimate the relationship between the value of a painting and the artist's age at the date of its...

Experimental entrepreneurship is often overlooked: experimentalists are less flamboyant than their conceptual peers, and their innovations arrive gradually and less conspicuously. Experimentalists work patiently to innovate, proceeding by trial and error in pursuit of ambitious but often...

This paper investigates the characteristics of the early settlers on the midwestern farming frontier, the correlates of their geographic mobility, and the determinants of their wealth. Using evidence drawn from the manuscripts of the federal censuses of 1850-1870, we find average rates of growth...

Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Jean-Michel Basquiat were key figures in the resurgence of expressive figurative painting in the late twentieth century. All three made personal visual art, drawing their subjects from among the people and things they cared most about. Yet they worked in very...