Artwork characteristics and prices in the New Zealand secondary art market, 1988–2011

ABSTRACT

Using hedonic pricing, prices realised at auction are estimated against artwork characteristics for New Zealand for over 27,000 artworks by over 1600 artists. The data-set is larger and more representative of an art market, especially for lower prices, than all other art price studies. The number of works by each artist auctioned over the entire period is a measure of each artist's market presence. Sample selection bias created by unsold artworks is corrected using the Heckit method. Estimation results including the creation of the first New Zealand art price index are presented and interpreted.

KEYWORDS:

• Hedonic pricing
• artworks
• characteristics
• auction
• selection bias

JEL CLASSIFICATIONS:

• C35
• G11
• D44

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.