Cultural goods carry economic and identity value and are therefore subject to strict regulation. Yet their illicit trade is a global phenomenon, historically linked to colonial dynamics and the financing of armed groups. This article focuses on Italy and shows that cultural objects are most likely to slip out of official channels in countries where demand for Italian heritage is strong and institutional controls are weak.
A global and often invisile problem
Cultural goods, such as paintings, sculptures, antiques, and archaeological properties, carry not only economic value but also deep identity and symbolic meaning. In some context, they are the most valuable objects a country is endowed with. For this reason, their trade is heavily regulated worldwide, shaped by national laws and reinforced by international conventions.
Despite these protections, the illicit trade in cultural goods is a worldwide phenomenon that has existed for centuries, closely connected to colonial extraction, looting during conflicts, and, more recently, the financing of armed and terrorist groups. Leading organizations such as the Museum Association and The Organized Crime Group of the UK Metropolitan Police and INTERPOL estimate the value of the illicit art market to range between $225 million and $3 billion, and between $300 million and $6 billion, respectively. In any case, unlike drugs or weapons which are clearly illegal and easily identifiable as such, cultural objects often circulate through legal-looking channels, making illicit transactions particularly difficult to quantify (Yates and Brodie, 2023; Sargent et al., 2020).
Why Italy is a key case
Italy represents an ideal case to study this phenomenon. It is one of the most culturally endowed countries in the world and has enshrined the protection of cultural heritage in its Constitution. Italy has also ratified the two main international legal instruments for the protection of cultural property, the UNESCO 1970 Convention and the UNIDROIT 1995 Convention, and hosts a specialized police force, the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, often cited as a model of excellence at the international level, with many international collaborations (Mele, 2022).
Despite this strong regulatory and enforcement framework, previous studies have already pointed to anomalies in Italy’s trade statistics for cultural goods (Beltrametti, 2013), and Italy remains one of the countries most affected by art theft globally (Balcells, 2019). Official trade data retrieved from the Comtrade Database (UN Comtrade, 2025) reveal a persistent mismatch: many cultural goods reported as imports from Italy by partner countries do not appear in Italy’s own export records. This mismatch raises a natural question: how can so many objects appear in other countries’ import records without matching exports from Italy?
How the study works
The study approaches this question by comparing what Italy declares as exports of cultural goods with what its trading partners declare as imports over the period 1994–2023. When imports consistently exceed exports, the resulting “trade gap” provides a useful signal of hidden or illicit flows (Fisman & Wei, 2009; Ferwerda et al., 2013). The analysis focuses on four categories of goods, such as paintings, sculptures, antiques, and archaeological properties, which differ in how tightly their trade is regulated. Striking patterns emerge at a glance: across all four categories and throughout the entire period, the gaps reach into the millions, revealing large and persistent discrepancies.
Fig. 1 The Italian Trade Gap in Cultural Goods. The figure shows, for each cultural good category and for each year (1994–2023): the total value of imports as declared by the Italian partners’ customs (blue lines); the total value of exports as declared by the Italian customs (red lines); the differences between the two, i.e., the trade gap (gray shaded areas). Only positive trade gap values are considered. All values are expressed in US dollars and are at constant 2015 prices.
To capture the link between interest in Italian culture and trade gaps, the study introduces a new indicator based on Google Trends. The indicator measures how salient the interest in the Italian heritage is in each country of the world by tracking online search activity for a set of core keywords directly related to Italian culture.
Fig. 2 Cultural Salience Index around the world. This figure shows the value of the Cultural Salience Index around the World (excluding Italy). The index is divided into 5 quantiles, and darker colors correspond to higher salience of Italian culture.
These trade gaps are then examined using a standard economic framework that takes into account key factors shaping international exchanges, such as income levels and demand, geographic distance, the cultural salience of Italian heritage, levels of corruption, and the role of conventions like the UNESCO and UNIDROIT, applying the same approach across all categories.
What we found
The evidence points to a simple but striking message: Italian cultural goods trade gaps tend to increase when demand captured by GDP and GDP per capita is higher, following the dynamics of the art market which is driven by collectors and auction houses concentrated in high-income countries (UNICRI, 2024). Countries that show a strong interest in Italian heritage are also the ones where trade data reveal the largest mismatches, underlining a major willingness to trade in an illicit manner.
When cultural goods circulate through legal markets like paintings, geographic distance still plays a role: shipping costs and logistics reduce these gaps as countries get farther away. By contrast, goods more exposed to illicit trafficking like archaeological properties show little sensitivity to distance, suggesting that illegal networks can move these objects across borders with relative ease.
Institutions also play a role. Stronger controls against corruption are linked to smaller trade gaps. The UNESCO 1970 Convention and the UNIDROIT 1995 Convention help limit illicit trade only in some cases and only when they are effectively enforced. Finally, the sharp rise in missing archaeological properties before and after Arab Spring highlights how conflict and looting can quickly feed global markets with a huge number of artifacts smuggled out of countries (Sargent et al., 2010).
Conclusions
One message stands out clearly: illicit trade in cultural goods is driven by demand and enabled by weak enforcement. Even in a country like Italy, with strict export rules and a specialized police unit, cultural objects can easily move across borders without being detected. Existing international agreements, such as the UNESCO 1970 and UNIDROIT 1995 Conventions, provide an important legal framework, but their impact depends on how effectively they are implemented.
More broadly, reducing illicit trade in cultural goods requires better coordination across national institutions, particularly customs, and a stronger commitment by states to enforce the rules they have already agreed upon.
References
Balcells, M. (2019). One looter, two looters, three looters … The discipline of cultural heritage crime within criminology and its inherent measurement problems. The Palgrave handbook on art crime (pp. 33–53). Palgrave Macmillan.
Beltrametti, S. (2013). Dati e analisi sul traffico illecito dei beni culturali. Aedon, 1, 61–70. https://doi. org/ 10. 7390/ 73728
Ferwerda, J., Kattenberg, M., Chang, H.-H., Unger, B., Groot, L., & Bikker, J. A. (2013). Gravity models of trade-based money laundering. Applied Economics, 45(22), 3170–3182. https:// doi.org/ 10. 1080/ 00036 846. 2012. 699190
Fisman, R., & Wei, S.-J. (2009). The smuggling of art, and the art of smuggling: Uncovering the illicit trade in cultural property and antiques. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(3), 82–96. https:// doi. org/ 10. 1257/ app.1. 3. 82
Mele, S. (2022). La protezione del patrimonio culturale dalle aggressioni criminali: Il controllo commerciale e il tracciamento dei beni antiquariali e d’arte [tex.lccn: 2023457373]. Laurus Robuffo. https:// books.google. it/ books? id= ul_ wzgEA CAAJ
Sargent, M., Marrone, J., Evans, A., Lilly, B., Nemeth, E., & Dalzell, S. (2020). Tracking and disrupting the illicit antiquities trade with open-source data. RAND Corporation. https:// doi. org/ 10. 7249/ RR2706
UN Comtrade. (2025). https://comtradeplus.un.org/
UNICRI. (2024). Cultural heritage smuggling and the nexus with terrorism. https://unicri.org/ sites/ defau lt/ files/ 2024- 07/ Cultu ral% 20Her itage% 20Smu ggling% 20and% 20the% 20Nex us% 20with% 20Ter rrori sm.pdf
Yates, D., & Brodie, N. (2023). The illicit trade in antiquities is not the world’s third-largest illicit trade: A critical evaluation of a factoid. Antiquity, 97(394), 991–1003.
About the article
Acciai, E., Belloni, M., Della Giusta, M. et al. Illicit shadows: the cultural goods trade gap for Italy. J Cult Econ 50, 53–79 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-025-09555-z
About the authors
Elia Acciai is a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Turin and the Collegio Carlo Alberto.
Michele Belloni is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Turin, Economics and Statistics “Cognetti de Martiis”, Collegio Carlo Alberto Affiliate.
Marina Della Giusta is Professor of Economics at the University of Turin, Economics and Statistics “Cognetti de Martiis”, Visiting Professor at the University of Reading, Collegio Carlo Alberto Affiliate.
Giovanna Segre is Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Turin, Economics and Statistics “Cognetti de Martiis”, UNESCO Chairholder in “Economics of Culture and Heritage: Strategies for Protection and Development”.
About the image
BATEN ZAMMOUR Archaeological Site 12.jpg, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
