Construction Of Hedonic Price Index For The “Most Liquid” Polish Painters

Art market has been developing in Poland and the first Art Fund was established in 2011. Therefore it seems that investment in art can be considered as alternative form by Polish investors. In order to decide whether art is a good investment, it is necessary to evaluate expected returns which might be obtained from such investment thus an art price index should be developed. The aim of the paper is to discuss artworks as investment assets and evaluate price index of paintings produced by 11 Polish artists whose artworks were traded the most often on auctions that were held in Poland in the years 2007–2010. In our research, employing data concerning 750 objects, we apply the hedonic index methodology to estimate returns from the paintings market. The results of our investigation show that hedonic quality adjustment essentially influences evaluation of artwork prices therefore we propose the aggregated hedonic index which might better describe situation at the art market than the hedonic index biased by the specification of a single model.