We find evidence for the behavioral biases of anchoring and loss aversion. We find that anchoring is more important for items that are resold quickly, and we find that the effect of loss aversion increases with the time that a painting is held. The evidence in favor of anchoring and loss...

Auction houses use both in-house and third-party guarantees for sellers who are concerned about the risk that not enough bidders will enter the auction for their works. Auction houses are compensated for guarantees by buyers’ commissions and successful sales after attracting important works of...

This paper examines the relationship between sale rates and price shocks in art auctions. Using data on contemporary and impressionist art, we show that while sale rates appear to have little relationship to current prices, there exists a strong negative relationship of sale rates to unexpected...

This paper shows that the price of a painting sold at an art auction and the experts' pre-sale valuations are anchored on the price at which the painting previously sold at auction. We are able to separate anchoring from rational learning by using the identifying strategy that the unobservable...

In this article, I report the results of a study of the prices paid by individual buyers at the Fulton fish market in New York City. In principle, this is a highly competitive market in which there should be no predictable price differences across customers who are equally costly to service. The...

The Droit de Suite, known in the UK as Artists’ Resale Rights, provides an artist with the inalienable right to receive a royalty based on the resale price of an original work of art. This paper provides an empirical analysis of actual changes in the UK auction market for art that is subject...

This Paper contains a review of the burgeoning research that has been designed to shed light on how the art auction system actually works and what it indicates about price formation. First, we find that in recent years returns on art assets appear to be little different from returns on other...

This paper contains a review of the burgeoning new research of the last decade that has been designed to shed light on how the art auction system works, what it indicates about price formation, and how well it performs. We begin with a short description of the mechanics of the auction system and...