Liberalizing Art: Evidence on the Impressionists at the End of the Paris Salon
University of Milan Bicocca Department of Economics, Management and Statistics Working Paper No. 386
45 Pages Posted: 7 Feb 2020 Last revised: 12 Nov 2019
There are 2 versions of this paper
Liberalizing Art. Evidence on the Impressionists at the End of the Paris Salon
Date Written: May 9, 2019
Abstract
We analyze the Paris art market between the government-controlled Salon as a centralized organization of art exhibition and the system liberalized by the Republican government based on competition between independent exhibitions. The jury of the old Salon decided on submissions with a bias toward conservative art of the academic insiders, reducing demand for the outsiders, as confirmed by the impact on prices of the acceptance of Impressionists. With a difference-in difference estimation we provide evidence that the end of the government-controlled Salon in 1880 started the increase of the prices of the Impressionists relative to the insiders.
Keywords: Art market, Market structure, Insider-Outsider, Hedonic regressions, Impressionism
JEL Classification: C23, Z11
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation