The relevance of hedonic price indices

We argue that for the case of heterogeneous commodities with infrequent tradings, such as paintings, it is relevant to base a price index on hedonic regressions using all sales and not resales only. To support this conclusion we construct a price index for paintings by Impressionists and their followers and compare the various estimators using bootstrapping techniques. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1996price index, heterogeneous commodities, returns on art investment,