Guido Candela

A Price Index for Art Market Auctions

This paper proposes a price index for modern andcontemporary paintings based on estimates and auctionprices. We use this index for the evaluation of theItalian art market and for comparisons with returns onother assets. During the period 1983–1994 art pricesincreased in line with inflation but returns onpaintings were lower than returns on financial assets.In the long run art prices are unrelated to financialassets prices, but a positive correlation with realestate prices emerges.

The Effects of World Heritage Sites on Domestic Tourism: A Spatial Interaction Model for Italy

Culture is gaining increasing importance in the modern tourism industry and represents a significant force of attraction for tourists (both domestic and international). Cultural tourism allows destinations and regions to expand their customer base, diversify their offer, extend the stay of the tourist, and reduce seasonality. Great efforts are made, by national governments and regions, in order to obtain official designation regarding the relevance of their historical/cultural attractions, for example through UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites (WHS) list. Such an aspect seems particularly relevant for a country like Italy, which has a high number of entries in the WHS list and where regions take an active role in promoting tourism. Using an 12-year panel of domestic tourism flows, we investigate the importance of the regional endowment in terms of WHS from two perspectives: (a) by separately estimating the effects, on tourism flows, of WHS located in the residence region of tourists and in the destination region; and (b) by taking into account potential spatial substitution/complementarity effects between regions due to their WHS endowment. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is offered to evaluate the spatial extent of the latter.

The Economics of Tourism Destinations

The tourism destination, intended as the location of tourism structures and services as well as the place where travelers’ needs are fulfilled, is the core of the tourism system. Usually, a destination is geographically well defined, but its boundaries may often blur and evolve. According to Davidson and Maitland (1997):

In Search of Stylized Facts on Art Market Prices: Evidence from the Secondary Market for Prints and Drawings in Italy

In the paper we develop some price indices for the secondary market forprints and drawings in Italy for the period 1977–1999. Theempirical evidence suggests the emergence of causal links from thepainting series and consumer price series to the print and drawingsprice series. Within the secondary market, the drawings price seriesprecedes the print price series.

Tribal Art Market: Signs and Signals

In this paper, we present a model for the marketability of a Tribal artwork and we test this model empirically using a unique hand-collected dataset, which comprises the worldwide Tribal art market auctions between 1999 and 2008. Our results show a significant relationship between the probability of an artwork to be sold and several signs and signals. The effect of the auction estimated prices on the probability of sales is nonlinear, and allows us to divide the Tribal art market into two price regimes. In the low-price regime, the effect of the auction estimated price on the probability of sales is negative. In the high-price regime, the effect of the auction estimated price on the probability of sales is positive.

Less Developed Countries, Tourism Investments and Local Economic Development

The present paper analyzes the forward linkages of a multinational’s investment in a resort which kicks off tourism activity in a LDC. We show that, under quite natural assumptions, overnight stays are increasing in the number of tourism related, differentiated goods and services supplied in equilibrium. These goods and services, if supplied by the local community, represent forward linkages of FDI in tourism. We investigate the multinational’s incentives to promote, reduce or eliminate these forward linkages and the effectiveness of some policy instruments available to a local government to leverage on the presence of FDI and to stimulate domestic entrepreneurship.

Cultural offer and distance in a spatial interaction model for tourism

Culture is more and more considered as an important driver of tourism. However, it is critical, for policymakers, to evaluate the potential returns from investments in culture and generally cultural offer, in particular in multiregion settings with a potentially inefficient distribution of cultural offer. Our paper focuses on the role of distance (between the tourist’s origin and destination regions) in mediating the tourism impact of cultural offer. This research question is investigated by means of a spatial interaction model, applied to the case of Italian domestic tourism. We find that distance indeed matters: a destination’s endowment in culture appears to be more attractive for long-distance tourists, while an origin region’s endowment seems to dinsincentivate long-distance trips to a greater extent.

Development Strategies for Tourism Destinations: Tourism Sophistication vs. Resource Investments

This paper investigates the effectiveness of development strategies for tourism destinations. We argue that resource investments unambiguously increase tourism revenues and that increasing the degree of tourism sophistication, that is increasing the variety of tourism related goods and services, increases tourism activity and decreases the perceived quality of the destinations resource endowment, leading to an ambiguous effect on tourism revenues. We disentangle these two effects and characterize situations where increasing the degree of tourism sophistication is a viable development strategy and where it is impracticable and describe the optimal policy mix.

Reconsidering psychic return in art investments

Measuring the psychic return of art investments is a debated issue in Cultural economics. Several works suggest Jensen’s alpha as a measure of the psychic return. Since the Jensen’s alpha is defined in the CAPM framework, its uncritical application as a measure of the psychic return may be problematic when the CAPM hypotheses do not hold. Applying an opportunity cost framework and the analytical tools of portfolio theory, we propose a new psychic return measure, which is not affected by the same issues as Jensen’s alpha. Psychic return estimates based on our measure are provided for several art market indexes as an empirical application.

Tourism Investments under Uncertainty: An Economic Analysis of ‘Eco-Monsters’:

‘Ecological monsters’ can be the legal outcome of rational choices made by three players: a firm, a policymaker and Nature. The firm asks the local policymaker for permission to undertake a real investment project in a stochastic framework, with real options and environmental externalities. The model consists of a non-cooperative game and its solution implies a bizarre outcome, both for the firm when it interrupts and abandons the investment project and for the policymaker when it is unable to avoid eco-monsters. Policy implications and partisan effects are explored.