Posthumous trading patterns affecting artwork prices

Abstract

This study aims to identify factors contributing to price fluctuations in artworks after an artist’s death. With access to information on seller characteristics from a historical dataset of all art auctions that took place in London between 1741 and 1913, we investigate how trading patterns and network effects at auctions affect art sales prices. Following an artist’s death, we capture dynamic effects in sales patterns and find that prices decline by 7%. We attribute this decline on the confluence of non-strategic and strategic effects, first on a frequent lack of access to professional consultation and secondly on changes in trading patterns of art dealers posthumously. Our results highlight the long-term influence of those factors on high valued art.

Subcontractor Networks and Affiliated Private Costs: Evidence forom Oklahoma Bridge Contracts

“…Those dealers with an advantageous location in the network paid lower prices, earned higher profits, and stayed in the market longer. De Silva et al (2022) shows the purchase networks of artists helps explain the divergence of art pricing following an artist's death. Jung et al (2022) uses subcontractor networks to causally identify the effect of subcontracting on highway procurement renegotiation in Vermont, finding that subcontracting raises renegotiation costs.…”

Subcontracting Network Formation Among U.S. Airline Carriers*

“…De Silva et al [2020] investigate the drivers of strategic network formation between dealers and sellers in a market for fine art as means of information acquisition and transmission impacting the dealers' market reach. DeSilva et al [2021] consider the artists' death effect on prices through network analysis Lux [2015]. shows that a learning mechanism affects the link formation in the network of interbank credit relationships.3 The exploration of subcontracting/outsourcing is motivated by a need to understand makeor-buy decisions and has been the subject of study in various settings and industries besides the airline industry, such as entertainment, health care and public service(De Silva et al [2012a];Marion [2009]).…”