2018/25 LEM Working Paper Series

Liberalizing Art. Evidence on the Impressionists at the end of the Paris Salon

Federico Etro, Silvia Marchesi and Elena Stepanova
  Keywords
 
Art market, Market structure, Insider-Outsider, Hedonic regressions, Impressionism


  JEL Classifications
 
C23, Z11


  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.
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