Art is often used as an investment vehicle. Given the importance of market efficiency in finance, we use a large auction-based index to test whether the art market is weakly efficient. Evidence reveals that returns on artworks exhibit high positive auto-correlation. We attribute this result to...

For gold, moving from clandestine to official trading does not significantly change informational efficiency. Both markets are inefficient suggesting that efficiency is linked more to the type of asset than to the legal status of the market.

This paper shows that before (after) fakes’ discoveries, artworks are less (more) likely to be sold through Sotheby’s or Christie’s. Prices only react negatively with a lag, suggesting that sellers try to postpone their sales as long as possible.

Discrimination against girls is well-documented, especially in Asia. We show that women try to level the playing field for their daughters by taking on debt. But wealth asymmetry between mothers and fathers perpetuates gender inequality across generations.

This paper starts from the observation that 23% of the world’s microfinance institutions (MFIs) manage without subsidies. We examine how unsubsidized institutions cope with their social mission. Overall, the lack of subsidies worsens social performances. However, our results show that...