Pricing art: Returns, trust, and crises

This Ph.D. dissertation consists of three independent chapters in the economics of art. To understand the fundamental aspects of how the art market functions, this dissertation employs very large samples of auctioned art around the world and studies: which artist traits, art object characteristics and transaction characteristics have determined art prices over the past sixty years in Chapter 1; how does the provision of provenance information on an art object induces trust and affects sales, prices, risk, and returns of art in Chapter 2; how do art investments fare in times of crises, both political (such as wars) and economic ones (recessions, energy shocks), by tracing the long-term performance of the UK art market over more than a century in Chapter 3.