The Influence of Macroeconomic Factors on the Art Market (on the Example of International Sales of the MacDougall’s Auction House)

The paper aims to investigate the effect of macroeconomic factors on the Russian fine art market between 2011 and 2018. The Russian fine art market is an emerging market, and the study of its specifics presents an interesting case. Oil price is used as a proxy for the state of the Russian economy. The international market for fine art is largely defined by trade through international auctions. The study constructs a quality-adjusted price-determining hedonic regression of art price using sales data from MacDougall’s, an international auction house specializing in Russian art, to analyze the impact of oil price as a pricing factor for the market. The investigation finds no impact of oil price on the market during the specified period, indicating the need for further research, including the impact of the geopolitical macroeconomic context. Nevertheless, this research has practical value due to the significance of the price determination model in the absence of oil price as a variable. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023.