"Dark tourism" as a repugnant market in Germany

 NPR's Planet money has a story about tourists visiting the site of Hitler's bunker in Berlin, and about "dark tourism" more generally:

Hitler's bunker is now just a parking lot. But it's a 'dark tourism' attraction anyway By Greg Rosalsky 

"As Germany made intensive efforts to memorialize Nazi victims in the 1990s and 2000s, they also had to grapple with what to do about infamous sites associated with Nazi perpetrators, like the Führerbunker. Over the years, Germans have shown resistance to anything that gives any whiff of memorializing — or even depicting — Hitler and his henchmen.

...

"For years, the German government resisted even recognizing the location of the Führerbunker. Some found visitation of this site distasteful, and they feared any official recognition of it could help it become a kind of shrine for neo-Nazis.

"The Nobel Prize-winning economist Al Roth has developed a concept he calls "repugnant markets." This is when society has a distaste for particular kinds of market activity and may take actions to outlaw or discourage it. Examples he gives include prostitution, buying and selling human organs, ticket scalping, price gouging in the wake of disasters, and eating dog or horse meat. One might add dark tourism of politically sensitive places to Roth's list.

"Heyne says that, despite official reluctance to recognize the location of the Führerbunker and offer anything interesting for tourists to see there, tourists, with the help of guidebooks, came to the site anyways.

...

"And so, in 2006, the Berliner Unterwelten, with the approval of government authorities, erected the information plaque that still stands there today, the only official recognition that this site has historical significance. They chose to make the sign in both German and English. It shows a schematic of the Führerbunker (and a connected bunker known as the Vorbunker) and a timeline of key events at the site. It has a German title, "Mythos und Geschichtszeugnis Führerbunker," or, in English, roughly, the myth and historical record of the Führerbunker.

...

"Perhaps recognizing that many tourists were coming to the Führerbunker and getting disappointed there was nothing there, a Berlin history museum, in 2016, unveiled a full replica of Hitler's bunker that tourists can now go to. (This is kind of similar to other repugnant markets; despite efforts to discourage or even ban a market, demand often proves irrepressible and finds willing suppliers. Think of the failure of Prohibition)."