The Returns to Picasso's Prints and to Traditional Financial Assets, 1977 to 1996

This paper updates prior work by Pesando (1993) regarding art as an investment. Using world-wide auction prices for Picasso prints for the period 1977 to 1996, this paper establishes that (1) a recovery in the art market did occur in the mid-1990s, but (2) the real rate of return on this segment of the art market remains low relative to its risk. Indeed, the real rate of return is beneath that provided by U.S. Treasury Bills.