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Cited by 538

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 28 of the 28 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Art as an Investment and the Underperformance of Masterpieces

Open access
Mei, Jianping, Moses, Michael·2002·American Economic Review

Abstract

This paper constructs a new data set of repeated sales of artworks and estimates an annual index of art prices for the period 1875-2000. Contrary to earlier studies, we find art outperforms fixed income securities as an investment, though it significantly under-performs stocks in the US. Art is also found to have lower volatility and lower correlation with other assets, making it more attractive for portfolio diversification than discovered in earlier research. There is strong evidence of underperformance of masterpieces, meaning expensive paintings tend to under-perform the art market index. The evidence is mixed on whether the "law of one price" holds in the New York auction market.

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Metadata

Authors
Mei, J., & Moses, M.
Venue
American Economic Review
Published
2002-11-01
Volume
92
Issue
5
Pages
1656-1668
ISSN
0002-8282 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3123292495
Cited by
538
References
28
FWCI
74.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Art as an Investment and the Underperformance of Masterpieces. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1257/000282802762024719
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Mei, J., & Moses, M. (2002). Art as an Investment and the Underperformance of Masterpieces. American Economic Review. https://doi.org/10.1257/000282802762024719

Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.