Art Market as a financial asset in times of distress (London, late 19th century and early 20th Century)

本论文探讨艺术品作为金融投资。许多现代报纸宣称艺术品是一种另类投资类别，但尽管人们对艺术品感兴趣，但几乎没有关于艺术品财务表现的研究。问题在于艺术品市场非常异质，每件艺术品都是独一无二的，而且是私人的，因此很难收集数据。本文利用19世纪和世纪初的史料，回避了后一个问题。收集到的大量信息被用来建立一个新的艺术品价格指数，这将是世纪后半叶第一个关于艺术品价格的享乐指数。由此产生的指数将在金融和/或经济危机的不同时期进行分析，以确定艺术品作为投资的作用。

The thesis investigates works of art as financial investments. Many modern newspaper proclaim art as an alternative investment class but despite the interest, little research exists on the financial performance of art. The problem is that the art market is very heterogenous, with each work of art being unique, and private, making it hard to collect data. The thesis circumvents the latter issue by using historical data from the 19th and early 20th Century. The rich amount of information collected is used to build a new art price index, which will be the first hedonic index on art prices for the 2nd half of the 19th century. The resulting index will be analyzed for various episodes of financial and/or economic crisis to identify what role art plays as an investment.