Using historical price records for Bordeaux Premiers Crus, we examine the impact of aging on wine prices and the long-term investment performance of fine wine. In line with the predictions of an illustrative model, young maturing wines from high-quality vintages provide the highest financial...

What can studying the creation of knowledge tell us about how new technical fields emerge and develop? This paper shows how a knowledge community may be necessary to support the legitimacy of new products that undergo performance evaluation before purchase. Using historical and ethnographic data...

Aggregate art price patterns mask a lot of underlying variation — both in the time series and in the cross-section. We argue that, to increase our understanding of the market for aesthetics, it is helpful to take a micro perspective on the formation of art prices, and acknowledge that each...

We consider a second-price private-value auction in the presence of an exogenous participation cost and a secret reserve price endogenously set by the seller. We show that, if the entry cost is strictly positive, the only equilibrium outcome is that the seller chooses a reserve price that deters...

Previous research has shown that non-local household investors make sub-optimal asset selection and market timing decisions. However, in real estate markets, heterogeneity in returns can exist even with identical ex ante investment (timing) choices, given that transaction prices are the outcome...

We dissect the performance of private equity (PE) investors in commercial real estate. We observe acquisitions, dispositions, and granular performance data for several thousand U.S. hotels. Investments by PEs specializing in the hospitality industry lead to more substantial operating efficiency...

Real and private-value assets—defined here as the sum of real estate, infrastructure, collectibles, and noncorporate business equity—compose an investment class worth an estimated $84 trillion in the U.S. alone. Furthermore, private values can affect pricing in many other financial markets,...