The flourishing art market in Poland

In 2004 Poland joined to the European Union and became a part of its unified market. Since then, intensive economic development has been observed, especially in the case of the contemporary art market, whose growth rate between 2017 and 2022 has been rapidly increasing. After nineteen years of this occurrence, this study provides not only the first quantitative analysis of the progress on the Polish art market from 1990 to 2022, but also an assessment of a country’s admission to the European Union on the domestic art market. Furthermore, in terms of socio-political relevance, this study constitutes an important insight of the economic effects of trade integration. Within the framework of hedonic regression model, a price index of contemporary Polish artists is constructed for years 1990-2022. To further verify the effect of Poland’s accession to the European Union, interrupted time series analysis is employed, with year 2004 as a cut-off point. The analysed sample consists of 98 contemporary Polish artists, which resulted in over 13,000 auction records observations. This paper provides significant evidence of an increase in the price index of contemporary Polish artists between 1990 and 2022 and positive impact of Poland’s accession to the European Union on that index. As empirical results reveal, the examined effect is stronger for sales abroad. A surge of 226.42 units in the year of accession suggests a positive influence of the economic integration within European market. Furthermore, for an entire sample, a positive long- term impact of Poland's accession to the European Union is noticeable and results in the index growth at rate of 0.86. Joining Poland to the European Union can be regarded as a major stimulus which has boosted not only a price index of contemporary artists, but also the qualitive and quantitative development of the country’s art scene in recent years.