Inequality and the Art Market

At a time of high wealth concentration at the top, investors are directing part of their wealth to the art market, that mobilizes annual sales of around 67 billion dollars and rising. Art prices grew more rapidly than stock prices in the run up to the global financial crisis of 2008-09 but its recovery in the period 2009-18 has been weaker than the strong upsurge in stock prices. Is artwork a “safe-haven” asset? Two pieces of evidence are explored in this lecture to address this question: (i) the behavior of real gold prices during the great depression of the 1930s, the stagflation of the 1970s and the global financial crisis of 2008-09 and (ii) correlation analysis between art prices and stock, oil, gold and bitcoin prices.