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Tale of Two Cities An Econometric Analysis of East & West Coast Fine Art Galleries

By Daniella Victoria Paretti

Abstract
In a 2021 report published alongside Art Basel and UBS, renowned cultural economist Dr.
Clare McAndrew posited that the value of art sales in 2020 amounted to an impressive $50 billion
(although this actually marks an over 10-year low). It is no secret that the global art markets are
extremely lucrative, attracting the interest of industry magnates and business tycoons alike.
Though it is important to note that art markets are historically quite distinct from their normal good
counterparts — the sector is laden with issues regarding transparency, high barriers to entry, and
hiding of wealth. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the tides began to turn; online
platforms for museums, auction houses, and galleries were employed more than ever before,
effectively modernizing the antiquated industry and expanding its reach to new consumers. How
has this trend of digitalization changed and improved art markets? More specifically, how can data
analytics and other technological resources serve the interests of private galleries? Using sales data
from a parent gallery with multiple locations across the United States (each displaying similar
works/artists), I have conducted a number of qualitative and statistical analyses to identify key
differences between the West and East coast locations. In short, the gallery on the West coast sold
more works and at a lower average cost than its counterpart, providing key insights into this local
market’s consumer base. Beyond this, factors like size, medium, and artist gender were found to
have statistically significant effects on the ultimate sale price and turnover rate of works. My
findings suggest that means of data analytics should be utilized by all actors in the art markets to
optimize their approach to business, as well as understand their consumers better than ever before.

Professor Michelle Connolly, Faculty Advisor
Professor Hans Van Miegroet, Faculty Advisor

JEL classification: Z11, C10, J11, O33

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User Loyalty and Willingness to Pay for a Music Streaming Subscription

By Nell Jones   

Music streaming has increased industry revenue and displaced piracy, but limited profits for artists. In this thesis, I examine user loyalty to streaming platforms, focusing on the asset specificity of features and estimating what users are willing to pay for each of these features. A structural equation model of survey data shows that feature satisfaction positively affects both asset specificity of and overall satisfaction with streaming platforms, strengthening user loyalty. Using conjoint analysis, I estimate that users are willing to pay at least $14.40 for platforms that offer algorithm, playlist and social features, and the ability to download music.

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Advisors: Professor Michael Munger, Professor Grace Kim | JEL Codes: Z1, Z11, M21

Investigating the Costs of Religious Observance: Cross-Country Analysis of Islamic Banking

By Myla Swallow and Richard Vargo

This study regresses key variables that influence the profitability of Conventional and Islamic banks as measured by Return on Average Assets, to determine the impact of Islamicity on the profitability of the banks in a given country. The study compares 36564 banks in 77 countries belonging to both Islamic and non-Islamic countries. We  find that Islamic banks have higher operating costs and overall experience lower return on average assets.

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Advisors: Professor Kent Kimbrough, Professor Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: F30; G21; Z12

The Effect of Tourism on Child Health Outcomes in Roatán, Honduras

By Hemal Pragneshbhai Patel

Increased tourism, especially in developing economies, brings with it more economic opportunities and avenues for development. In Roatán, the largest of Honduras’ Caribbean Bay Islands, tourism has brought economic development that the island had never before experienced. However, the impact of this economic development brought by increasing cruise ship tourism on child health has yet to be investigated. The increase in economic development is expected to improve child health through improved absorbed nutrition, and this paper uses an OLS regression model to examine how differential exposure to tourism development during a child’s crucial early life developmental window impacts later life health outcomes, proxied by height-for-age Z-scores.

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Advisors: Professor Dennis Clements, Professor Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: I1; I15; Z32

Does Media Coverage of Sexual Assault Cases Cause Victims to Go to the Police? Evidence from FBI Data and Google Trends

By Harry Elworthy

This paper investigates the effect that national news coverage of prominent sexual assaults has on the reporting decisions of sexual assault victims. Estimates are based on time series data of reports made to police stations in the US from 2008 to 2016 and Google Trends data of search volume, along with an identification strategy that uses a number of individual high profile sexual assault allegations and related events as instruments. By removing assaults that occurred on the day that they were reported, I estimate the effect of coverage only on the reporting of assaults, and not on assaults themselves. A significant positive effect of news coverage on sexual assault reporting is found using several specifications. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that there were between 31 and 121 additional reports of sexual assault for each of the 38 high profile events captured. No evidence is found to suggest that these additional reports of sexual assault have different arrest rates to other reports, indicating that there are not a significant number of false reports. This paper adds to current literature on the sexual assault reporting decision by considering the effect of news coverage and by using different methods of inference to previous papers.

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Advisor: Professor Patrick Bayer | JEL Codes: D91, J16, K42, L86, Z13

Evaluating Asset Bubbles within Cryptocurrencies using the LPPL Model

By Rafal Rokosz

The advent of blockchain technology has created a new asset class named cryptocurrencies that have experienced tremendous price appreciation leading to speculation that the asset class is experiencing an asset bubble. This paper examines the novelty and functionality of cryptocurrencies and potential factors that may lead to conclude the existence of an asset bubble. To empirically evaluate whether the asset class is experiencing an asset bubble the LPPL model is used. The LPPL model was able to successfully identify two of the four crashes within the data set signifying that cryptocurrencies are within an asset bubble.

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Advisors: Ed Tiryakian and Grace Kim | JEL Codes: G12, Z00, C60

Effect of Sentiment on Bitcoin Price Formation

By Brian Perry-Carrera

With the recent growth in the investment of cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin, it has become increasingly relevant to understand what drives price formation. Given that investment in bitcoin is greatly determined by speculation, this paper seeks to find the econometric relationship between public sentiment and the price of bitcoin. After scraping over 500,000 tweets related to bitcoin, sentiment analysis was performed for each tweet and then aggregated for each day between December 1st, 2017 and December 31st, 2017. This study found that both gold futures and market volatility are negatively related to the price of bitcoin, while sentiment demonstrates a positive relationship.

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Advisor: Grace Kim | JEL Codes: G12, G41, Z00

Increased Foreign Revenue Shares in the United States Film Industry: 2000 – 2014

By Victoria Lim

The American film industry, which has historically been driven by the domestic market, now receives an increasing proportion of its revenue from abroad (foreign share)To determine the factors influencing this trend, this paper analyzed data from 11 countries of 2,337 American films released during 2000  2014Both film and country attributes were analyzed to determine each attribute’s effect on foreign share, whether its effect size has changed over time and whether each attribute has changed in frequency amongst films released. The results identified six attributes, star actors, sequels, releases in top markets, release time lag, GDP growth and a match in languagethat contributed to the increase in foreign share over this period

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Advisor: James Roberts, Kent Kimbrough | JEL Codes: F40, L82, Z11 | Tagged: Foreign Share, International Box Office Revenue, Motion Picture Industry

Optimal Ordering in Sequential English Auctions: A Revenue-Comparison Model for 18th Century Art Auctions in London and Paris

By Amaan Mitha

We develop a model based on several auction parameters to test the widely held notion that in a sequential English auction, it is optimal for the seller to arrange the lots in order of decreasing value. We test this model against two datasets of 18th century auctions, one of various auctions from Paris and the other from Christie’s sales in London. We find that the Paris data support the claim, while the Christie’s data seem to refute the optimal strategy. We also find a rationale for bidders in the Christie’s auctions to alter their strategies, accounting for the discrepancy.

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Advisor: Neil De Marchi | JEL Codes: D4, Z11 | Tagged: Auctions, English Auction, Lot Ordering, Optimal Auction Strategy, Sequential Auctions

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