Buyer behaviour in a regional thoroughbred yearling market

This paper reports the results of an hedonic pricing analysis of a regional thoroughbred auction market, adding to a literature which has been built m ainly on data from elite auction markets. The main contribution of the pape r is the finding that the role of the dam in affecting yearling price, elus ive in the existing literature, is shown to depend primarily on information about progeny performance rather than dam performance. Additional results confirm existing knowledge about the roles of the sire, yearling sex, and y earling age, and support suspicions that race horses are consumer rather th an investment goods.