Long-term Comovements in International Markets for Paintings

We study steady-state relationships between prices for paintings obtained by three groups of painters (Impressionist, Modern and Contemporary European Masters, Other minor European painters, Contemporary US painters) at public auctions in New York, London and Paris between 1962 and 1991. The analysis is carried out by estimating Vector autoregressive models, using the recent techniques developed by Johansen. The results show that the various markets move closely together, and are, even in New York, led by what happens to the group of European Great Masters, whose prices are not influenced by other prices. We also examine the relation between art and stock markets; we find that there is no long-run relation between these two assets, though in the short-run, financial markets do influence art markets.