Financial returns to collecting rare political economy books |
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Affiliation: | 1. Department of Economics, U.S. Naval Academy, USA;2. FAME|GRAPE, ul. Mazowiecka 11/14, 00-052, Warsaw, Poland;1. Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Kolkata, India;2. Centre for Training and Research in Public Finance and Policy (CSSSC), Calcutta, India;3. CES–ifo, Munich, Germany;4. GEP, Nottingham, UK;5. National Law University, Delhi, India;6. Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India;1. Aarhus University, Department of Economics, Fuglesangs Allé 4, 8210, Aarhus V, Denmark;2. The Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), P.O. Box 55665, SE-102 15, Stockholm, Sweden;3. Vienna University of Economics and Business, Institute for Sociology and Social Research, Gebäude D4, 3. Stock Welthandelsplatz 1, 1020, Wien, Austria;1. University of Valencia, ERI-CES, Spain;2. Faculty of Economics, Avda. dels Tarongers, s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain |
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Abstract: | Rare books of political economy are eminently collectable. Using historical prices, I employ hedonic regressions to estimate financial returns to collecting the works of ten eminent political economists and develop a price index for this corpus of collectables. For the observation period 1975–2019, I find that in those 45 years investing in rare political economy books yielded an average annual real rate of return of 2.8%, which is well in line with the returns to collecting rare books of classical literature. Compared with other collectibles such as fine art, investing in rare books turns out to be financially more profitable. |
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Keywords: | Rare books Political economy Price indices Collectibles Cultural economics History of economic thought G11 Z11 |
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