Does travel inspire? Evidence from the superstars of modern art

This paper investigates whether travel increases the value of paintings produced by modern visual artists. The analysis is based on the 214 most prominent modern visual artists born between 1850 and 1945 and auction records of their paintings over the past 20 years. We find that artworks produced in the year of a journey are 7% more valuable than paintings produced in periods with no travel. We attribute this effect to human capital investments, knowledge spillovers and inspiration from the travel destination itself. There are persistent, but declining benefits to travel over the subsequent 4 years. The analysis shows that the impact of travel is smaller for later periods as modern art becomes more abstract. The effect on the value of paintings differs depending on the purpose of a journey: work-related, recreational and politically motivated journeys have a positive contemporaneous effect on value, whereas educational journeys have a negative effect. In addition, we find that France, Germany and the United States are the most frequently visited destinations for modern artists and also yield considerable benefits during times of strong innovation.     

What is the Value of Luxury? A Cross‐Cultural Consumer Perspective

International luxury businesses are challenged by the identification and satisfaction of the common needs and desires of global market segments. Although luxury goods have become available to a wider range of consumers, the traditional conspicuous consumption model has been transformed into a new experiential luxury sensibility that is marked by a change in the way that consumers define luxury. Based on an empirical study in collaboration with American, European, and Asian researchers, the results provide evidence that consumers in various parts of the world purchase or wish to purchase luxury products for varied reasons but that such consumers generally possess similar values. Regardless of their countries of origin, the basic motivational drivers of luxury consumers are similar among the financial, functional, personal, and social dimensions of luxury value perceptions, although the relative importance of these dimensions varies.     

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Kenneth Warren. Industrial Genius: The Working Life of Charles Michael Schwab

As Kenneth Warren acknowledges in his introduction, only newmaterial or the adoption of a different perspective justifiesthe issuance of a new biography of an already well-documentedlife, and a new perspective is what he delivers in his biographyof Charles M. Schwab. Schwab rose from an underling in the engineeringcorps of Andrew Carnegie's Edgar Thomson Works in 1878 to thepresidency of Carnegie Steel in 1897, and at age thirty-eight,the presidency of US Steel in 1900. After resigning from US     

Individual investors surpass their reputation: Trading behaviour on the Polish futures market

This paper examines individual investors’ trading behaviour by testing the presence of Monday and January anomalies on the Polish futures market, where individuals are the predominant trader type. Both anomalies are well established in the literature, and they are at least partially attributed to individual investors’ trading activities. We conduct an intraday analysis of trading volume, open interest, returns, and return volatility on the futures market in Poland and find the contribution of individuals to market anomalies to be grossly overstated. Hence, individual investors’ trading on the Polish futures market surpasses the prediction by the majority of investigations for mature stock markets.