Price and death: modeling the death effect in art price formation

How does an artist׳s death impact on the price of her works of art? We investigate this question by analyzing a Stackelberg differential game played by an artist and a continuum of collectors. Employing the “piecewise open-loop strategy” concept, we find that the art price remains at some well-defined “pseudo-competitive” level as long as the artist is alive. When the artist unexpectedly dies, the price increases on impact. This so-called death effect varies negatively with the artist׳s age at death.