Selling Out: The Financialization of Contemporary Art
Selling Out: The Financialization of Contemporary Art

Author(s): Hannah Rose Emmert
Subject(s): Behaviorism
Published by: Scientia Moralitas Research Institute
Keywords: art market; art investments; financialization; art indexes;
Summary/Abstract: This project came out of a behavioral economics class I took in 2016. Behavioral economics is the synthesis of human psychology and the more formulaic aspects of economics. I used this discipline as a lens for looking at how the financial services industry exploited the contemporary art market with it’s lack of regulation and transparency. My aim is to show the various ways this drastic financialization has happened by discussing the various heuristics used to value art and the financial instruments that financialized contemporary art mimics. Furthermore, I have found evidence that art is being used as collateral for important assets such as pension funds. The fact that art is volatile and unregulated makes art an unreliable investment and certainly not stable enough to base pension fund values on. This is the beginning of future research that I plan to conduct in an attempt to predict the eminent collapse of these contemporary art financial instruments. I hope to present this paper outline to book publishers to elaborate my findings into a book for industry professionals.

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