Investment in Australian Aboriginal Art

Recent changes in Australian legislation that limit the value of how artworks that can be considered as assets in retirement funds have had an impact on the Australian Aboriginal Art market. In this paper we estimate the impact of these changes on the price index based on prices paid for 15,845 works by over 200 artists at art auctions from 1986 to 2019. Using an OLS and a quantile regression approach, we estimate hedonic price models for various segments of the Australian Aboriginal art market. These models are used to estimate price indices in order to investigate if the changes in Australian laws concerning the sale and use of art assets has influenced the potential returns for different segments of the market