THE LABOR MARKET IN THE ART SECTOR OF BAROQUE ROME

• DOI: 10.1111/ecin.12115
• Publication Date: 2014-06-25T09:52:12Z
• Authors: Federico Etro; Silvia Marchesi; Laura Pagani
• Keywords: jel:J3; jel:Z11; 0502 economics and business; 05 social sciences; 8. Economic growth; jel:C23; Inter-industry wage differentials, Matched employer-employee data, Occupational choice, Art market; jel:D8; labor economics

AbstractWe analyze the labor market for painters in Baroque Rome using unique data on primary sales of portraits, still lifes, genre paintings, landscapes, and figurative paintings. In line with the traditional artistic hierarchy of genres, average price differentials between them were high. The matched painter‐patron nature of the dataset allows us to evaluate the extent to which price heterogeneity is related to unobservable characteristics of painters and patrons. We find that the market allocated artists between artistic genres to the point of equalizing the marginal return of each genre. Residual price differences at the employer level can be explained in terms of incentive mechanisms to induce effort in the production of artistic quality and compensating wage differentials. (JEL C23, D8, J3, Z11)