On the Preservation of Illegal Street Art

Bertrand Crettez; Régis Deloche

doi:10.1515/rle-2022-0078

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On the Preservation of Illegal Street Art

Bertrand Crettez und Régis Deloche

Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 30. März 2023

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Aus der Zeitschrift Review of Law & Economics Band 19 Heft 2

Abstract

Protecting street art faces significant hurdles. To overcome them, Salib, P.N. (2015. The law of Banksy: Who owns street art? The University of Chicago Law Review, pp. 2293–2328) proposes to unbundle the various rights that art ownership usually implies. Specifically, he proposes to treat the finder of a street art piece as a minority shareholder in this piece, granting him some percentage of its value. We provide an economic analysis of this proposal by refining a simple discovery process model involving street art finders and the owners of the premises where street art is found. We consider both the optimal number of researchers and the share of the street art value that should accrue to a finder. We also pay attention to the co-determination of the numbers of seekers and street artists. We find that a change in the share of the value of discovered street art has an ambiguous effect on the numbers of seekers and street artists. Moreover, relying on this share alone cannot guarantee that the equilibrium values of the numbers of seekers and street artists are equal to their socially optimal values.

Keywords: discovery process; preservation; property rights; street art

JEL Classification: K11; K12; L00; Z11; Z18

Corresponding author: Bertrand Crettez, Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas, CRED, EA 7321, 21 Rue Valette – 75005 Paris, France, E-mail: bertrand.crettez@u-paris2.fr

Acknowledgements

We thank the Editor in Chief, Francesco Parisi, and a referee for helpful comments on a previous version of this work.

Appendix:

Lemma 1

Let s be given such that sR(1) > c. Then there exists a unique equilibrium, i.e., a unique number n^e such that

s R ( n e ) n e = c .

Proof

By assumption sR(1) > c.

Moreover, observe that R(n)/n is decreasing with respect to n. Indeed,

d d n R ( n ) n = n R ′ ( n ) − R ( n ) n 2 .

Since R(n) is strictly concave and R(0) = 0, it holds that

R ( 0 ) − R ( n ) < R ′ ( n ) ( 0 − n )

which implies that d d n R ( n ) n < 0 . Since V is bounded above so is R and when the number of seekers is large enough we get that s R ( n ) n < c . As s R ( n ) n is continuous on [1, + ∞), there is a unique value n^e of n such that

s R n e n e = c .

Lemma 2

Assume that s V ( 1,1 ) c > 1 , V a ( 1,1 ) c a > 1 and that V a ( 1 , n ) c a > 1 for all n if V^a(a, n) is decreasing with respect to n. Further, assume that both V(a, n) and V^a(a, n) are bounded and continuous and take nonnegative values on R + 2 . Then, there are positive numbers a^e and n^e of street artists and seekers, respectively, such that the following two no-profitable entry conditions are satisfied

s V a e , n e n e = c V a a e , n e a e = c a .

Proof

Consider the application φ : [ 1 , n ̄ ] × [ 1 , a ̄ ] → R + 2 defined by

(6) φ ( a , n ) = s V ( a , n ) c , V a ( a , n ) c a .

Under the assumption that s V ( 1,1 ) c > 1 , V a ( 1,1 ) c a > 1 , V a ( 1 , n ) c a > 1 for all n if V^a(a, n) is decreasing with respect to n and that V and V^a are bounded above, there are positive values n ̄ and a ̄ such that whenever ( 1,1 ) ≤ ( n , a ) ≤ n ̄ , a ̄ , it holds that φ ( n , a ) ≤ n ̄ , a ̄ . That is, φ maps [ 1 , n ̄ ] × [ 1 , a ̄ ] into itself. Since φ is continuous and [ 1 , n ̄ ] × [ 1 , a ̄ ] is a compact convex set, by Brouwer Theorem it has a fixed-point. It is easy to see that this fixed-point gives equilibrium values of the numbers of seekers and of street artists.□

Proof of Proposition 1

Proof. Totally differentiating the equilibrium conditions (4) and (5) we obtain after a few algebra

(7) ∂ a ∂ s = − ∂ V a a ∂ n ∂ V a a ∂ a ∂ n ∂ s ,

(8) ∂ n ∂ s = − V ( a , n ) sn 1 ∂ V n ∂ n − ∂ V n ∂ a ∂ V a n ∂ n ∂ V a a ∂ a .

Since V^a is strictly concave ∂ V a a ∂ a is negative and it follows from equation (7) that the signs of ∂ n ∂ s and ∂ a ∂ s are the same if, and only if, ∂ V a ∂ n is positive. When ∂ V a ∂ n < 0 , it follows from (8) that ∂ n ∂ s > 0 and thus that ∂ a ∂ s < 0 . When ∂ V a ∂ n > 0 , the sign of ∂ n ∂ s is indeterminate.□

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Received: 2022-11-29

Accepted: 2023-02-13

Published Online: 2023-03-30

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https://doi.org/10.1515/rle-2022-0078

Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel

discovery process; preservation; property rights; street art