News

Best paper award for research into art and gender

  • Faculté de Droit, d'Économie et de Finance (FDEF)
    28 novembre 2018
  • Catégorie
    Recherche
  • Thème
    Finance

The Financial Management Association at its 2018 annual meeting bestowed its Investments Best Paper Award to Prof. Roman Kräussl and his co-authors for their work on gender and art auction prices.

Is Gender in the Eye of the Beholder? Identifying Cultural Attitudes with Art Auction Prices” examines 1.5 million auction records from 45 countries. These records include 62,422 individual artists and auctions of their work dated 1970 to 2013.

Despite there being no credible evidence that works of art by women artists are inferior to those produced by men, the auction records showed a big gap in sales prices. While works by men were auctioned for a mean transaction prize of 48,121 USD, those of women sold for only 25,262 USD.

Furthermore, when comparing the records with the United Nations Gender Inequality Index and the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index, the authors found that these price discrepancies are higher in countries with lower gender equality indices.

“There has long been anecdotal evidence of gender discrimination in the art world. Our paper provides empirical proof,” explained Prof. Kräussl.

The award was presented to Prof. Kräussl, Prof. Renée B. Adams (University of Oxford), Associate Prof. Marco Navone (University of Technology Sydney), and Prof. Patrick Verwijmeren (Erasmus University Rotterdam) during the Financial Management Association annual meeting in San Diego, USA, in October 2018.

The award is sponsored by the American Association of Individual Investors, a non-profit organisation which aims to provide education, information and research to its 150,000 members.