Gender Inequality and Returns to Reputation in Art Markets

Abstract

This paper studies how gender and reputation jointly shape valuation in the visual art market. We develop a microfounded benchmark auction model in which artwork prices depend on artists’ effort, reputation, and gender. The model predicts that the price discount for female artists should decline with reputation and become negligible at sufficiently high levels of reputation. We test these predictions using two complementary approaches. First, we examine 67,615 auction sales by 686 living contemporary artists over 1996–2014. Conditional on rich artwork and artist characteristics, nationality fixed effects, and year-by-location auction fixed effects, we find that works by female artists sell for less than comparable works by male artists, but this discount shrinks substantially with formal recognition and market standing. Second, we conduct a pre-registered experiment in a controlled auction setting to isolate demand-side valuation mechanisms. The experimental evidence confirms the same pattern: bids for works attributed to female artists are lower on average, and the gap narrows sharply when the artist is presented as highly reputed.

Keywords: gender inequality, reputation, art markets, auction data, theory-driven experiment