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...

The quality of fine-dining restaurant food is complex and presents information issues in customers’ quality evaluation, configuring this good as a luxury and cultural good. We investigate how different types of information available in the market influence non-expert customers’ quest for...

This paper explores the relationships between forms of governance and efficiency, in societies with and without State, with several specific agent behaviors. Using a theoretical framework where the private agents are, or are not, able to efficiently coordinate their actions, we study how forms...

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...

An avalanche of empirical studies has addressed the validity of the rank-size rule (or Zipf's law) in a multi-city context in many countries. City size in most countries seems to obey Zipf's law, but the question under which conditions (e.g. sample size, spatial scale) this 'law' holds remained...