On the effect of anchoring on valuations when the anchor is transparently uninformative

We test whether markets are needed to mitigate the effects of anchoring on peoples' pref- erences. We anchor subjects by asking them if they are willing to sell a bottle of wine for a transparently uninformative random price. We elicit subjects' Willingness-To-Accept for the bottle before and after the market. Subjects either participate in a small or a large dou- ble auction market. The variance in subjects' Willingness-To-Accept shrinks within trading groups. Our evidence supports the idea that markets have the potential to mitigate a bias. However, the market is not needed: our anchoring manipulation failed in a large sample.