Art as an Investment and the Underperformance of Masterpieces

@article{Mei2001ArtAA,
  title={Art as an Investment and the Underperformance of Masterpieces},
  author={Jiang Mei and Michael J. Moses},
  journal={New York University Stern School of Business Research Paper Series},
  year={2001}
}
  • Jiang MeiMichael J. Moses
  • Published 1 August 2001
  • Economics
  • New York University Stern School of Business Research Paper Series
This paper constructs a new data set of repeated sales of artworks and estimates an annual index of art prices for the period 1875-2000. Contrary to earlier studies, we find art outperforms fixed income securities as an investment, though it significantly under-performs stocks in the US. Art is also found to have lower volatility and lower correlation with other assets, making it more attractive for portfolio diversification than discovered in earlier research. There is strong evidence of… 
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454 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
52
Background Citations
168
Methods Citations
54
Results Citations
28

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52 References

Art as an Investment: The Market for Modern Prints

Repeat sales of modern prints at auction are used to estimate a semiannual index of prices for the period 1977-92. As in other studies of art as an investment, prints do not compare favorably to…

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In their paper on price comovements of paintings, Ginsburgh and Jeanfils show that in three important markets (London, Paris and New York), prices of well-known and lesser known painters ''move…

Long-term comovements in international markets for paintings

The relevance of hedonic price indices: the case of paintings

We argue that for the case of heterogeneous commodities with infrequent tradings, such as paintings, it is relevant to base a price index on hedonic regressions using all sales and not resales only.…

How Auctions Work for Wine and Art

interview auctioneers, and even to buy a little wine.' In the meantime I have also had the opportunity (with John Abowd, 1988) to observe and collect data on the auction sale of impressionist and…

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