ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the idea of autoregulation: that the market might act to regulate itself. Autoregulation denotes the aggregate effect of customer preference for good provenance, with price forcing a legal market. Most evidence for autoregulation is anecdotal, derived from the stated opinions of dealers themselves that provenance is becoming an increasingly important determinant of price. This chapter engages in a variety of analytical procedures using publicly available auction house sales data in order to test the hypothesis that certain forms of ‘good provenance’ lead to better sales performance for the objects in question, demonstrating a preference in the market towards demonstrably legitimate prior ownership histories. This seems not to be the case: the prices of suspect objects do not appear to be depressed at auction and quality, rather than watertight provenance, emerges from the analysis to be apparently the main driver of price in the market.
