I wonder how the recovery of stolen artworks plays out with insurance. If a museum's (or ultimate owner's) insurance company pays out for the theft, and then a decade later the works are recovered, does the museum (or owner) have to return funds to the insurance company? What if the museum is not in a financial position to do so... could they be forced, ironically, to sell the recovered art?
There was an EconTalk about Art Loss Register that covered this very question [1]. The insurance company returns it as long as the original owner pays back the amount paid out with some interest. The insurance company doesn't benefit from any appreciation of the artwork though.
What's unclear though is that (as described in the same podcast), the insurance company doesn't pay out the full value of the artwork. The TV show Lupin uses this as the plot device whereby a fraudster claims the artwork is stolen to get the insurance money as a kind of temporary loan.
