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...

In this paper we set out some methods that utilize the longitudinal structure of earnings of trainees and a comparison group to estimate the effectiveness of training for the 1976 cohort of CETA trainees. By fitting a components-of-variance model of earnings to the control group, and posing a...

Tradeoffs between monetary wealth and fatal safety risks are summarized in the value of a statistical life (VSL), a measure that is widely used for the evaluation of public policies in medicine, the environment, and transportation safety. This paper demonstrates the widespread use of this...

Throughout the post-war period, U.S. and Canadian unemployent rates moved in tandem, but this historical link apparently ended in 1982. During the past three years, Canadian unemployment rates have been some three percentage points higher than their U.S. analogues, and this gap shows no sign of...

The Sotheby's/Christie's price-fixing scandal that ended in the public trial of Alfred Taubman provides a unique window on a number of key economic and antitrust policy issues related to the use of the auction system. The trial provided detailed evidence as to how the price fixing worked, and...

The challenge of effective merger enforcement is tremendous. U.S. antitrust agencies must, by statute, quickly forecast the competitive effects of mergers that occur in virtually every sector of the economy to determine if mergers can proceed. Surprisingly, given the complexity of the regulators...

In this paper we provide an empirical evaluation of the effect that the provision of an arbitration statute has on the wage levels of police officers. We analyze the effect of arbitration on wages by comparing wage levels across political jurisdictions and over time using a sample of states. Two...

The failure of many paintings to sell in art auctions indicates the presence of reserve prices set by sellers. This paper examines the relationship between sale rates and price surprises over time in art auctions. Using data on contemporary and impressionist art, we show that while sale rates...

In this paper we show that omitted variables and publication bias lead to severely biased estimates of the value of a statistical life. Although our empirical results are obtained in the context of a study of choices about road safety, we suspect that the same issues plague the estimation of...