Chicago Booth's Initiative on Global Markets recently polled their panel of academic economists in the U.S. on whether a new law banning price gouging would be useful. Almost no one thought that would be a good idea:
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query gouging. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query gouging. Sort by date Show all posts
Monday, June 13, 2022
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Will there soon be large-scale markets for restaurant reservations?
I've been hearing the drumbeat for a while, and here's the NY Times on some new apps that seek to charge for restaurant reservations and make them exchangeable...Getting a Good Table by Flicking an App, Not Greasing a Palm
"Nowhere is the competition for tables more cutthroat than in New York City, where a black market in restaurant reservations already exists online. But since February, several new apps have taken the fight to the streets: Zurvu, Shout, Killer Rezzy and, starting Monday, Resy are all striving to become the favored portal for people willing to pay a premium to get into the best restaurants, at the last minute, via a few taps on their mobile devices.
...
"Whether diners and restaurateurs will play along is unclear. Some of the new apps, like Zurvu and Resy, cooperate with restaurants, sharing revenue (now ranging from $10 a person to $50 a table) in exchange for access to prime tables. Others, like Shout, simply make reservations under assumed names, then sell them for a flat fee or at auction. One online service, Food for All, began openly scalping reservations for $50 in April; it has already folded, with a plaintive farewell post, lamenting that restaurants “are very resistant to the idea of selling reservations.”
...
"In March, the entrepreneur Sasha A. Tcherevkoff started Killer Rezzy, an app and website that sells reservations obtained with or without the cooperation of restaurants; buyers do not know whether their transaction is authorized or not. He had no intention of causing an uproar, he said, but a social media bloodletting began, bringing accusations of scalping, price-gouging and elitism on him and his business model. He now offers to remove any restaurant from his roster upon request.
A reservation at Jean-Georges in Manhattan is always highly sought.Brian Harkin for The New York Times
READ THE DISCUSSION »
"Nowhere is the competition for tables more cutthroat than in New York City, where a black market in restaurant reservations already exists online. But since February, several new apps have taken the fight to the streets: Zurvu, Shout, Killer Rezzy and, starting Monday, Resy are all striving to become the favored portal for people willing to pay a premium to get into the best restaurants, at the last minute, via a few taps on their mobile devices.
...
"Whether diners and restaurateurs will play along is unclear. Some of the new apps, like Zurvu and Resy, cooperate with restaurants, sharing revenue (now ranging from $10 a person to $50 a table) in exchange for access to prime tables. Others, like Shout, simply make reservations under assumed names, then sell them for a flat fee or at auction. One online service, Food for All, began openly scalping reservations for $50 in April; it has already folded, with a plaintive farewell post, lamenting that restaurants “are very resistant to the idea of selling reservations.”
...
"In March, the entrepreneur Sasha A. Tcherevkoff started Killer Rezzy, an app and website that sells reservations obtained with or without the cooperation of restaurants; buyers do not know whether their transaction is authorized or not. He had no intention of causing an uproar, he said, but a social media bloodletting began, bringing accusations of scalping, price-gouging and elitism on him and his business model. He now offers to remove any restaurant from his roster upon request.
But restaurants do not necessarily know that they are on the roster. Last week, Killer Rezzy charged $25 for a table for four in a coveted slot — Saturday at 8 p.m. — at Peasant, in NoLIta, providing the name to give at the front desk. On Tuesday, the restaurant’s manager, Dulcinea Benson, said she had no idea that her tables were being sold online.
“Of course that bothers me,” she said. “We’ve been building up this restaurant and our relationships with customers for years,” she said. All of its 100 seats can be reserved free on OpenTable.
Many hard-to-get-into restaurants use OpenTable, but mostly for “shoulder seatings,” before 5:30 and after 9:30 p.m. They use their own software (or even pencil and paper) to manage prime time, when they can fill the room for free. The service charges restaurants a monthly fee, plus $1 for each customer it supplies. The Priceline Group said that the acquisition would add restaurants to its existing travel and hotel booking services, Kayak and Booking.com, and OpenTable told its members that the service would remain free. For now, restaurateurs are waiting to see where the wind of public opinion blows."
And here's some further discussion, also from the Times. Some people think all this might even be repugnant...INTRODUCTION
A reservation at Jean-Georges in Manhattan is always highly sought.Brian Harkin for The New York Times
In the past few months several new apps have let people pay to get reservations at restaurants where tables are in a great demand. Some essentially scalp reservations. With others, like Resy, the restaurants themselves sell reservations.
Are these services a useful way to let people get into popular restaurants, or are they just another way for restaurants to sell something that was once free?
DEBATERS
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
The secondary ticket industry (scalping, to you)
The "secondary ticket industry" has a trade show, meeting tomorrow in Las Vegas, about which they say: "Ticket Summit is the leading trade show and conference in the secondary ticket industry."
These are the folks who sell tickets on the aftermarket (often after buying them on the primary market before others can), and who are often called by the more familiar, less charitable name of scalpers.
Grownup economists recognize that there's a place for secondary markets, but I wonder if a convention of ticket re-sellers doesn't have something of the flavor of a sex-workers' conference, in the sense that the participants are engaged in an industry that is often viewed as repugnant, and which is hemmed in by legal constraints that are sometimes ignored.
My attention was drawn to the conference by one of the speakers, Christian Hassold, who I met when he did an undergrad thesis on secondary ticket sales. The most interesting undergraduate theses are written by students with a real passion for what they are studying, and Christian, who is now off in the entrepreneurial world, has continued to write about ticket sales on his blog The Ticket Economist.
He always seemed like the kind of guy you would like to take in a game with, and it turned out that he's good at getting tickets too: his blog mixes reviews of news and scholarship with some practical advice: see e.g. Buying from a Scalper? Five Do’s and Don’ts, and Bargaining for Tickets on the Street.
TTE points to two thoughtful essays on scalping. One is by Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails: TR thoughts on ticket re-sellers / scalping (which also includes some interesting links).
Another is this Slate article by Mark Gimein:
Is Ticket Scalping All That Bad? Miley Cyrus' new crackdown on concert gouging just shows how complex the problem is.
These are the folks who sell tickets on the aftermarket (often after buying them on the primary market before others can), and who are often called by the more familiar, less charitable name of scalpers.
Grownup economists recognize that there's a place for secondary markets, but I wonder if a convention of ticket re-sellers doesn't have something of the flavor of a sex-workers' conference, in the sense that the participants are engaged in an industry that is often viewed as repugnant, and which is hemmed in by legal constraints that are sometimes ignored.
My attention was drawn to the conference by one of the speakers, Christian Hassold, who I met when he did an undergrad thesis on secondary ticket sales. The most interesting undergraduate theses are written by students with a real passion for what they are studying, and Christian, who is now off in the entrepreneurial world, has continued to write about ticket sales on his blog The Ticket Economist.
He always seemed like the kind of guy you would like to take in a game with, and it turned out that he's good at getting tickets too: his blog mixes reviews of news and scholarship with some practical advice: see e.g. Buying from a Scalper? Five Do’s and Don’ts, and Bargaining for Tickets on the Street.
TTE points to two thoughtful essays on scalping. One is by Trent Reznor of the band Nine Inch Nails: TR thoughts on ticket re-sellers / scalping (which also includes some interesting links).
Another is this Slate article by Mark Gimein:
Is Ticket Scalping All That Bad? Miley Cyrus' new crackdown on concert gouging just shows how complex the problem is.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Miscellaneous repugnant transactions
Germany to ban paintball
"The German government is planning to ban paintball and laser shooting games in reaction to the recent school massacre in which 15 people died.
Under legislation agreed by the ruling coalition of the chancellor, Angela Merkel, using air rifles to shoot paint-filled pellets at opponents is likely to be made illegal, and would be punishable with fines of up to €5,000 " (HT Muriel Niederle)
Over at Knowledge Problem: Price gouging: Is it wrong? Should it be against the law?
At MR, Tyler Cowen reports:"Love Land, a sex theme park set to open this October in China won't have the chance to lose it's virginity. Chinese bureaucrats ordered the park destroyed after details of the park's featured attractions were leaked.
The story is here. The rest of the article relates:
The park was to have giant-sized reproductions of male and female anatomy, and offered lessons in safe sex and the proper use of condoms. There was also an exhibition about the history of sex, as well as workshops offering sex techniques.
The entrance to park featured a giant pair of women's legs clad only in a red thong. Those legs are now closed forever. Officials would only say that the concept of the park was vulgar, and deemed unnecessary. Bulldozers and wrecking ball were seen destroying the exhibits as onlookers tried to get a peak.
China considers the topic of sex taboo, even though illegal prostitution is at an all-time high in the country. "
Fertility treatments in Britain: a post actually headlined Repugnant Transactions follows a story in the Guardian, Thousands of women leaving UK for fertility treatment, • Women losing patience with NHS waiting lists • Eggs and donated sperm in short supply, study says.
"Couples here are able to exploit the fact that, in some countries, women who choose to donate eggs can be paid, said Culley, with some donors in America receiving up to $10,000. In Britain, by contrast, tight regulation of fertility means egg donors receive only expenses.
"All the evidence is that cross-border reproductive care is growing. Women here do this for all sorts of reasons," she said. "There is a serious shortage of eggs, donated sperm is in shorter supply than before, the cost can be cheaper abroad and some people want IVF which they can't get on the NHS."
...
"Isobel O'Neill, a fertility counsellor in Glasgow, said couples seeking a donated egg who visit the Glasgow Royal Infirmary are told there is a six- or seven-year wait for one on the NHS. Even those willing to pay at the private Glasgow Centre for Reproductive Medicine, where she also works, face a delay of up to a year."
California High Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban
"The California Supreme Court upheld a ban on same-sex marriage Tuesday, ratifying a decision made by voters last year. The ruling comes at a time when several state governments have moved in the opposite direction.
"The court’s decision does, however, preserve the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed between the justices’ ruling last May that same-sex marriage was constitutionally protected and voters’ passage in November of Proposition 8, which banned it.
The court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George for a 6-to-1 majority, noted that same-sex couples still had a right to civil unions. Such unions, the opinion said, gives those couples the ability to “choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage.”
Justice George wrote that Proposition 8 did not “entirely repeal or abrogate” the right to such a protected relationship. Instead, he said, it “carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term ‘marriage’ for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law.”
The 18,000 existing marriages can stand, he wrote, because Proposition 8 did not include language specifically saying it was retroactive."
Update, hugging: Jorge Ortiz directs my attention to a story in today's NY Times that I had overlooked, some high schools are banning hugs:
"And schools from Hillsdale, N.J., to Bend, Ore., wary in a litigious era about sexual harassment or improper touching — or citing hallway clogging and late arrivals to class — have banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule. "
An innovative early paper on repugnance: Ravi Kanbur, "On Obnoxious Markets", July 2001. Revised version published in Stephen Cullenberg and Prasanta Pattanaik (editors), Globalization, Culture and the Limits of the Market: Essays in Economics and Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2004.
Professor Kanbur argues that extreme outcomes, and asymmetric and inadequate information, and inequality are big components in making markets obnoxious, and I agree.
I'm personally reluctant to set out a theory of what makes markets repugnant since I always find markets that don't fit into any simple framework. Same-sex marriage, for example, is a transaction that many people find repugnant (and is now once again illegal in California, see above), but it is no more extreme, or subject to asymmetric information, or unequal than heterosexual marriage, which is just about the opposite of a repugnant transaction, what we might call a "protected" transaction.
"The German government is planning to ban paintball and laser shooting games in reaction to the recent school massacre in which 15 people died.
Under legislation agreed by the ruling coalition of the chancellor, Angela Merkel, using air rifles to shoot paint-filled pellets at opponents is likely to be made illegal, and would be punishable with fines of up to €5,000 " (HT Muriel Niederle)
Over at Knowledge Problem: Price gouging: Is it wrong? Should it be against the law?
At MR, Tyler Cowen reports:"Love Land, a sex theme park set to open this October in China won't have the chance to lose it's virginity. Chinese bureaucrats ordered the park destroyed after details of the park's featured attractions were leaked.
The story is here. The rest of the article relates:
The park was to have giant-sized reproductions of male and female anatomy, and offered lessons in safe sex and the proper use of condoms. There was also an exhibition about the history of sex, as well as workshops offering sex techniques.
The entrance to park featured a giant pair of women's legs clad only in a red thong. Those legs are now closed forever. Officials would only say that the concept of the park was vulgar, and deemed unnecessary. Bulldozers and wrecking ball were seen destroying the exhibits as onlookers tried to get a peak.
China considers the topic of sex taboo, even though illegal prostitution is at an all-time high in the country. "
Fertility treatments in Britain: a post actually headlined Repugnant Transactions follows a story in the Guardian, Thousands of women leaving UK for fertility treatment, • Women losing patience with NHS waiting lists • Eggs and donated sperm in short supply, study says.
"Couples here are able to exploit the fact that, in some countries, women who choose to donate eggs can be paid, said Culley, with some donors in America receiving up to $10,000. In Britain, by contrast, tight regulation of fertility means egg donors receive only expenses.
"All the evidence is that cross-border reproductive care is growing. Women here do this for all sorts of reasons," she said. "There is a serious shortage of eggs, donated sperm is in shorter supply than before, the cost can be cheaper abroad and some people want IVF which they can't get on the NHS."
...
"Isobel O'Neill, a fertility counsellor in Glasgow, said couples seeking a donated egg who visit the Glasgow Royal Infirmary are told there is a six- or seven-year wait for one on the NHS. Even those willing to pay at the private Glasgow Centre for Reproductive Medicine, where she also works, face a delay of up to a year."
California High Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban
"The California Supreme Court upheld a ban on same-sex marriage Tuesday, ratifying a decision made by voters last year. The ruling comes at a time when several state governments have moved in the opposite direction.
"The court’s decision does, however, preserve the 18,000 same-sex marriages performed between the justices’ ruling last May that same-sex marriage was constitutionally protected and voters’ passage in November of Proposition 8, which banned it.
The court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George for a 6-to-1 majority, noted that same-sex couples still had a right to civil unions. Such unions, the opinion said, gives those couples the ability to “choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage.”
Justice George wrote that Proposition 8 did not “entirely repeal or abrogate” the right to such a protected relationship. Instead, he said, it “carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term ‘marriage’ for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law.”
The 18,000 existing marriages can stand, he wrote, because Proposition 8 did not include language specifically saying it was retroactive."
Update, hugging: Jorge Ortiz directs my attention to a story in today's NY Times that I had overlooked, some high schools are banning hugs:
"And schools from Hillsdale, N.J., to Bend, Ore., wary in a litigious era about sexual harassment or improper touching — or citing hallway clogging and late arrivals to class — have banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule. "
An innovative early paper on repugnance: Ravi Kanbur, "On Obnoxious Markets", July 2001. Revised version published in Stephen Cullenberg and Prasanta Pattanaik (editors), Globalization, Culture and the Limits of the Market: Essays in Economics and Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 2004.
Professor Kanbur argues that extreme outcomes, and asymmetric and inadequate information, and inequality are big components in making markets obnoxious, and I agree.
I'm personally reluctant to set out a theory of what makes markets repugnant since I always find markets that don't fit into any simple framework. Same-sex marriage, for example, is a transaction that many people find repugnant (and is now once again illegal in California, see above), but it is no more extreme, or subject to asymmetric information, or unequal than heterosexual marriage, which is just about the opposite of a repugnant transaction, what we might call a "protected" transaction.
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