Price indices for heterogenous goods such as real estate or fine art constitute crucial information for institutional or private investors considering alternative investments in times of financial markets turmoil. Classical mean-variance analysis of alternative investments has been hampered by...

This paper investigates the extent that economic markets have incorporated mainstream artistic acceptance of African American art. Price levels and movements for paintings by African American artists versus their white contemporaries are compared using auction data from 1972 to 2004. Means in...

The market for modern Indian art is an emerging art market, having come into a proper existence only in the late 1990s. This market saw tremendous growth in its initial years and then a downturn that started around 2007-2008. Using data from auctions conducted by a major Indian art auctioneer,...

This note examines the investment performance of diamonds and other gems (sapphires, rubies, and emeralds) over the period 1999–2010, using a novel data set of auction transactions. Over our time frame, the annualized real USD returns for white and colored diamonds equaled 6.4% and 2.9%,...

Abstract: Works of art are neither easily tradable across borders, nor evaluated according to globally identical standards. We examine geographical segmentation and its effects on price formation and returns in the international art auction market. We find (i) a close connection between the...

As the global financial crisis hit the world-wide stock markets, investors looked for alternative investments to diversify their portfolios. One of the more attractive alternate investment opportunities has been investment in art. However, in order to consider artworks as investment assets, the...