Konst som investering: En studie av investeringar i svenska kvalitetsmålningar under perioden 1985-2006

Sammanfattning: This paper analyses how Swedish fine-art oil paintings sold at auctions has performed as a monetary investment during the period autumn 1985 until spring 2006. An average price technique as well as a hedonic regression technique, applied to a sample of 19 213 auction sales, is used to construct price indices. The indices show somewhat different results, which is explained by the inability of the average price model to adjust for relative differences in quality between periods. The hedonic regression model on the other hand captures this effect, why the hedonic index is applied in a financial return model. By adjusting for transaction cost, the financial return of an average investment in paintings is calculated. The result shows an average real return on Swedish fine-art oil paintings over the period of -2,7 percent per year. The monetary appreciation is also applied to a financial model from the portfolio theory in order to calculate the risk of investing in painting. After having compared the meagre financial return and risk with an alternative financial investment in the stock market portfolio, it is concluded that paintings have been a poor financial investment during the period of study.