CAHIER DE RECHERCHE #1202E WORKING PAPER #1202E Département de science économique Department of Economics Faculté des sciences sociales Faculty of Social Sciences Université d’Ottawa University of Ottawa Auction Prices of Classical Music Manuscripts – A Hedonic Approach* Patrick Georges† and Aylin Seçkin‡ January 2012 * The authors would like to thank Mark Tennenhouse for outstanding research assistance while he was at University of Ottawa’s School of Music. We also thank Erdal Atukeren, Victor Ginsburgh, Douglas Hodgson, Catherine Liston-Heyes, and Charles H. Smith for comments and suggestions on earlier drafts, and Stephen Roe of Sotheby’s for providing assistance with some individual facts. † Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, 55 Laurier East, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 6N5, Canada; Email:
[email protected]. ‡ Department of Economics, Istanbul Bilgi University, Kurtulus Deresi Caddesi, Beyoglu Dolapdere 34440, Istanbul, Turkey; Email:
[email protected]. Abstract The literature on art auctions has overlooked the market for classical music manuscripts and this paper explores, for the first time, the determinants of “hammer” prices for about 360 classical music manuscripts auctioned at Sotheby’s (London) during the 1998-2009 period. We use hedonic price regressions in order to explain the price of classical music manuscripts by several characteristics. The paper shows that the “trace” of the composer (e.g., whether the manuscript is fully or partly in the hand of the composer or in a scribal hand), the artistic value of the composition, the number of pages, the period (Baroque, Classical, etc.), and of course the name of the composer and the relative scarcity of his manuscripts, are all characteristics that contribute to explain the hammer price of these manuscripts.