• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.533-543
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• 2023

This study explores the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Korean art market and contrasts the classic hedonic method of art price prediction with the Artificial Neural Network technique. The empirical analysis of this paper utilizes 14,639 observations of Korean art auction data from 2015 to 2021. There are three types of variables in this study: artist-related, artwork-related, and sales-related. Previous studies have suggested that these three types of variables influence art prices. The empirical findings in this research are in twofold. First, in terms of RMSE and R², the Artificial Neural Network outperforms the hedonic model. Both techniques discover that sales and artwork variables have a greater impact than artist-related attributes. Second, when the primary factors of art price are controlled, Korean art prices are found to fall dramatically in 2020, shortly following the onset of COVID-19, but to rebound in 2021. The main lesson in this study is that the Artificial Neural Network enhances art price prediction and reduces information asymmetry in the Korean art market even in the face of unanticipated turmoil such as the COVID-19 outbreak.