Senior Lecturer
Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania
“The Dubious Economics of the Art Market”

When a truck driver in California discovers a might-be-Pollock, why does a Dubai businessman offer a hedge? When On Kawara aimed to produce paintings at the rate of one per day, why did prices keep going up? When Damien Hirst put a red nose on a portrait of Stalin, why did auction bids go through the roof? Gizem Saka explores the characteristics of the contemporary art market in which demand and supply mechanisms defy the conventional expectations of economics.