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Art experts and auctions Are pre-sale estimates unbiased and fully informative?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2016

Luc Bauwens  and
Victor Ginsburgh
Luc Bauwens
Affiliation:
CORE, Université Catholique de Louvain
Victor Ginsburgh
Affiliation:
Université Libre de Bruxelles and CORE
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Summary

Public sales art catalogues include low and high pre-sale price estimates by experts. This makes it possible to analyze whether pre-sale estimates are unbiased predictors of realized prices. Unbiasedness is tested using a sample of some 1,600 lots of English silver auctioned by Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Results show that estimates are slightly (but significantly) biased and that experts do not use all the information that is available to them when they make their estimates.

Résumé

Résumé

Les catalogues publiés avant les ventes publiques incluent souvent des estimations des prix pour les objects qui seront dispersés lors de la vente. Il est par conséqeunt possible d’analyser si ces estimations (réalisées par des experts) constituent des anticipations non biaisées des prix qui seront obtenus. L’absence de biais est testée sur base d’un échantillon de quelque 1 600 lots d’argenterie anglaise dispersés à Londres par Christie’s et Sotheby’s. Les résultats font apparaître que les estimations sont légèrement (mais significativement) biaisées. En outre, et ceci est plus surprenant, les experts ne prennent en compte toute l’information dont ils diposent lorsqu’ils établissent leurs estimations.

Keywords

biasedness of pre-sale estimatesnot fully informative pre-sale estimatesD44Z1D44Z1
Type
Research Article
Information
Recherches Économiques de Louvain/ Louvain Economic Review , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , 2000 , pp. 131 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 2000 

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Footnotes

*

We are grateful to Laure Dorchy who made her data on English silver available to us and to Russell Davidson, Renato Flores, Michiel Keyzer, Costas Meghir, José Paris and Ariane Szafarz for many useful comments and discussions. Kathryn Graddy, who played the role Of the usually anonymous referee, also deserves many thanks for her comments on the one before the last version. Financial support from the Belgian Government under Project PAI P4/01 is gratefully acknowledged.

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