Various methods to estimate the size of the shadow economy are discussed and the results of the shadow economy of 21 OECD countries are presented. Then the specific case of Italy is investigated and the aim of this section is to produce an estimate of the Italian
shadow economy with the MIMIC (Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes) method. The procedure to obtain the underground economy as a share of official GDP is presented. The paper ends with some general conclusions about the reliability of the model approach and the efficacy of economic policies
to reduce the shadow economy.
In this study a simple economic model is developed for analyzing the market of works of contemporary fine arts(l). So far only a few authors(2) have tried to analyze supply of and the demand for works of fine arts in the literature. Moreover, in most of these studies only particular aspects are investigated, and the interaction between both sides of the market are rarely analyzed. The main argument put forward for this neglect is that the market for fine arts is something very special, because of the characteristics of each piece of work (i.e., its uniqueness, individuality and lack of homogeneity severely restricting the substitution between them). Furthermore, little empirical work has been done on the market for contemporary fine arts(3) -which is not surprising when only special aspects are dealt with in the literature.The paper develops a simple economic model of the supply and demand for works of modern fine arts. The model will be used to explain the prices of representative works of the top one hundred contemporary artists in each year of the seventies.(4) The basic idea underlying the model refers to the general behavioral approach of economists, i.e., the search for similarities in the behavior of the various actors. The model is specified in the second section. The results of the econometric estimates for the period 1971 to 1978 are presented next, as well as the forecasts of the esthetic and economic evaluation of the work of the top hundred modern artists in 1979. A summary is then presented and some conclusions drawn.
Supply and Demand for Works of Contemporary Fine ArtsThe starting point of our analysis is the assumption that the market for works of modern fine arts is competitive, in which supply and demand determine the Page 41
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