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on Cultural Economics |
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Issue of 2021‒03‒15
four papers chosen by Roberto Zanola Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale |
| By: | Heinrich Ursprung |
| Abstract: | Rare books of political economy are eminently collectable. Using historical prices, I employ hedonic regressions to estimate financial returns to collecting the works of ten eminent political economists and develop a price index for this corpus of collectables. For the observation period 1975-2019, I find that in those 45 years investing in rare political economy books yielded an average annual real rate of return of 2.8%, which is well in line with the returns to collecting rare books of classical literature. Compared with other collectibles such as fine art, investing in rare books turns out to be financially more profitable. |
| Keywords: | rare books, political economy, price indices, collectibles, cultural economics, history of economic thought |
| JEL: | G11 Z11 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_8910&r=all |
| By: | David W. Galenson (University of Chicago - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)) |
| Abstract: | Quantitative analysis of narratives of art history published since 2000 reveals that scholars and critics now judge that Andy Warhol has surpassed Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns as the most important modern American painter. Auction prices suggest that collectors share this opinion. Disaggregated analysis of the published narratives by decade reveals that Warhol first gained clear critical recognition as the leading Pop artist in the 1990s, and then as the most important American artist overall in the 2000s. This rise in Warhol’s status appears initially to have been a result of his enormous influence on Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and others in the cohort that transformed the New York art world in the 1980s, and subsequently of his persisting influence on leading artists around the world who have emerged since the 1990s, including Damien Hirst, Takashi Murakami, and Ai Weiwei. Warhol’s many radical conceptual innovations, that transformed both the appearance of art and the behavior of artists, made him not only the most important American artist, but the most important Western artist overall of the second half of the twentieth century. |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfi:wpaper:2021-14&r=all |
| By: | Benti, Behailu Shiferaw; Stadtmann, Georg |
| Abstract: | In 2020, the video game Animal Crossing: New Horizons was listed among the top ten in terms of revenue. We analyze the game by relying on an interdisciplinary framework of border studies. Borders can be interpreted not only in a geographical sense but also in terms of a temporal dimension as well as a cultural dimension. We highlight how the game blurs the borders between the real and virtual world. |
| Keywords: | Border,Animal Crossing,real versus virtual world |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:euvwdp:423&r=all |
| By: | Hirsch, Patrick; Köhler, Ekkehard A.; Feld, Lars P.; Thomas, Tobias |
| Abstract: | Are government bond risk premia affected by TV news in addition to the effect of the original event reported? We analyze 1,209,566 human-coded news items from newscasts aired by leading TV stations in Europe and the US between January 2007 and November 2016. We establish causality using instrumental variables that attract media attention and crowd out media coverage on Eurozone related news. We find FIFA and UEFA tournaments as well as major natural disasters and airplane crashes as valid instruments for the empirical analysis. The results show that an exogenous variation in the share of Eurozone related news affects bond spreads. A one percentage point increase in the share of Eurozone related news leads to -7.6 basis points lower bond spreads. Taking the tonality of the news into account paints a more differentiated picture: A one percent higher share of positive Eurozone related news leads to -69.7 basis points lower bond spreads, whereas a one percentage point higher share of negative country-specific news is related to 2.5 basis points higher bond spreads. |
| Keywords: | Media bias,TV Newscasts,Tonality,Eurozone crisis,GIIPS bond yield spreads |
| JEL: | E58 G12 L82 |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:aluord:2009&r=all |