Art collections and taste in the Spanish <Emphasis Type="Italic">Siglo</Emphasis><Emphasis Type="Italic">de Oro</Emphasis>

We analyze art pricing in a unique dataset on Madrid inventories between 1600 and 1750. We estimate a price index for the Spanish art market that is used for a general historical analysis of art during this period, showing a large increase in the real price of paintings during the XVII century. Then we examine the price differential between domestic and foreign paintings: At the beginning of the century domestic production was priced substantially below imported paintings, but the price gap was gradually reduced during the century. We argue that such a price convergence was not the fruit of variations in real exchange rate, relative supply or home bias, but was associated with increasing prices for the new domestic painters of the XVII century. Increasing remuneration for painting may have induced artistic innovations by domestic producers and created the conditions for the development of the Siglo de Oro of Spanish art.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Ex-ante</Emphasis> versus <Emphasis Type="Italic">ex-post</Emphasis>: comparison of the effects of the European Capital of Culture Maribor 2012 on tourism and employment

The estimation of the economic effects of cultural events is a topic that has stirred numerous debates in cultural economics. Although economic impact studies and contingent valuation have been the most frequently used methods, both suffer from numerous problems. In this article, we use ex-post econometric verification as a new and promising method in cultural economics in the estimation of the economic effects of cultural events and apply it to the estimation of the effects of the 2012 European Capital of Culture Maribor on tourism and employment. This enables us to compare results from economic impact and ex-post econometric verification studies to find significant differences in particular in terms of new employment. We determine the net effects on new tourism and find that they were mainly present in Maribor, the holder of the project, and not in the other five partner cities. We conclude by reflecting on the state of the art of the studies of economic effects of cultural events in cultural economics and their relevance for the study of cultural tourism.     

The impact of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Droit de Suite</Emphasis> in the UK: an empirical analysis

The Droit de Suite, known in the UK as Artists’ Resale Rights, provides an artist with the inalienable right to receive a royalty based on the resale price of an original work of art. This paper provides an empirical analysis of actual changes in the UK auction market for art that is newly subject to the Droit de Suite (DDS) because of a change in law. All changes are measured relative to changes for art not subject to the DDS and relative to changes in the auction markets for art in countries where there has been no change in law. We do a difference-in-difference analysis, differencing price growth and sales growth across market segments and across countries over the period 1993–2007. Our results suggest that the introduction of the DDS has not had a consistent negative impact on the UK art auction market during the period of study.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Minerva</Emphasis> and the Development of Science (Policy) Studies

This article analyzes the transformation of Minerva from an intellectual towards a scholarly journal by making use of bibliometric methods. The aim is to provide some empirical insights that help to understand what properties of the journal changed in the course of this transformation process. Minerva was one of the first journals that reflected on science and its role in society and science policy in particular. Analyzing the development of the journal sheds light on the emergence of science (policy) studies and on Minerva’s role as a forerunner in this field. In a first step, the methods will be described. The second section provides some empirical results of the publication output of Minerva and its relations to other journals in the field. The empirical findings are put into a broader perspective in the concluding third section.