Cultural economics: the case of Portuguese painters

Abstract

This paper utilizes a dataset of auction prices for artworks by Portuguese painters to explore the key determinants of art prices. Our investigation focuses on the relationship between artists' age and work performance of three painters: Vieira da Silva, Cargaleiro and Resende, controlling for other factors, suh as the size, support, and media. We find that creativity patterns varied significantly among these three authors, revealing early peaks for Vieira Da Silva and Cargaleiro, while Resende peaked in later years. Comparing price index for modern artists at the global level, we find that the Portuguese index was significantly impacted by the sovereign debt crises and since then has failed to catch up with the global fellow.