New Research by Turner College Economist Examines the Political Economy of Hunter Biden's Art Sales

In the fall of 2020, just as his father, former U.S. Senator and Vice President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden, was ascending to the Presidency of the United States, Robert Hunter Biden was being introduced to the art world as its latest phenom. A new study by Turner College economist Frank Mixon examines the market for Hunter Biden’s art, with an eye toward its value as a rent seeking device that benefitted Hunter and the wider Biden family. More specifically, Mixon's study asserts that the usefulness of Hunter Biden’s art sales as a rent- or transfer-seeking tool is supported by three empirical observations. First, Hunter Biden’s paintings did not hit the art world to critical acclaim. In fact, the quality of his artwork has been widely panned by esteemed art critics from around the globe (e.g., Sebastian Smee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic for The Washington Post), many of whom described their dismay at both its asking and transaction prices.

Second, although information on the buyers of Hunter Biden’s art has, by design, been hidden from the public, the two known buyers – Hollywood attorney and Democratic donor Kevin Morris, and Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, owner of a commercial real estate company in Los Angeles – are supporters of both Joseph Biden and the Democratic Party. Naftali received a prestigious presidential appointment to the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, typically a stepping-stone to a U.S. ambassadorship, shortly after making the second of two purchases totaling $97,000, clearly giving the sales a privilege seeking appearance. Third, although data on Hunter Biden’s art sales are relatively scant, some quantitative evidence is provided in the study, which is set to appear in Frontiers in Political Science, indicating that sale prices of the art and U.S. President Joseph Biden’s monthly approval ratings are positively and significantly correlated. More specifically, each percentage point decline in U.S. President Joseph Biden’s monthly job approval rating is associated with a $1,962 drop in the realized price of Hunter Biden’s art. This result is consistent with the public choice theory of rent seeking. Was the confluence of Joseph Biden’s ascendancy to the U.S. Presidency and his son Hunter Biden’s introduction as a professional artist simply serendipitous? Mixon's study asserts that it was not, and in doing so offers a competing hypothesis that establishes its core contribution – namely, that Hunter Biden’s art sales illustrate how cultural markets can function as a novel form of rent seeking tied to political capital.

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