While there are no significant investment characteristics that inhibit art from being considered as an asset, a major hurdle has long been the lack of a systematic measure of its financial performance. Due to its heterogeneity (each piece is different) and its infrequency of trading (the exact...

We provide evidence for the behavioral biases of anchoring and loss aversion in paintings sold at auction. We find that anchoring is more important for items that are resold quickly, and that the effect of loss aversion increases with the time that a painting is held. This evidence contributes...

This study provides an empirical test of the Bolton, Freixas and Shapiro (2012) credit ratings model using data from art auctions. Our empirical work discovers that, despite the fact that art and bonds belong to totally different asset classes, financial intermediaries and investors behave in...

We estimate the effect of ordering by value on revenues in sequential art auctions held by Sotheby's and Christie's. We exploit a pre-determined rotation of which of these two houses holds their auction first during auction week in New York City. When the house that goes first has relatively...