Reconsidering Psychic Return in Art Investments
12 Pages Posted: 26 Feb 2020 Last revised: 2 Jan 2013
Date Written: August 9, 2012
Abstract
Measuring the psychic return of art investments is a debated issue in Cultural economics. Several works suggest Jensen’s alpha as a measure of the psychic return. Since the Jensen’s alpha is defined in the CAPM framework, its uncritical application as a measure of the psychic return may be problematic when the CAPM hypotheses do not hold. Applying an opportunity cost framework and the analytical tools of portfolio theory, we propose a new psychic return measure, which is not affected by the same issues as Jensen’s alpha. Psychic return estimates based on our measure are provided for several art market indexes as an empirical application.
Keywords: psychic return, art investment, portfolio theory
JEL Classification: G11, Z11
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation