Data envelopment analysis meets Picasso: The impact of auction houses on the hammer price

Employing a hedonic price approach within a framework of central tendencies no conclusive results about the impact of auction houses on final prices of art objects have been found. In order to focus on auction houses as a unit we have applied a benchmarking technique, DEA, developed for efficiency studies. New performance indicators are developed and calculated giving an insight into auction house differences impossible to obtain using hedonic price approach. The performance indicators may also be regarded as quality indicators assuming perfect arbitrage leads to the same unobservable quality of art object obtaining the same price.