IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v17y2003i2p85-97.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Some Economics of Ticket Resale

Author

Listed:
  • Pascal Courty

Abstract

A large number of brokers and scalpers resell a significant fraction of event tickets at substantial markups and they manage to do so despite the fact that promoters and ticketing agencies do not support resell for profits and often attempt to block secondary market. Why can't promoters capture the profits from secondary markets or at least deter brokers from doing so? I present a simple explanation that borrows from the literature on airline ticket pricing and draw parallels with that literature. I review some evidence consistent with this explanation.

Suggested Citation

  • Pascal Courty, 2003. "Some Economics of Ticket Resale," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 17(2), pages 85-97, Spring.
  • Handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:17:y:2003:i:2:p:85-97
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/089533003765888449
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/089533003765888449
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James L. Swofford, 1999. "Arbitrage, Speculation, and Public Policy Toward Ticket Scalping," Public Finance Review, , vol. 27(5), pages 531-540, September.
    2. Pascal COURTY, 2000. "An economic guide to ticket pricing in the entertainment industry," Discussion Papers (REL - Recherches Economiques de Louvain) 2000024, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).
    3. Becker, Gary S, 1991. "A Note on Restaurant Pricing and Other Examples of Social Influences on Price," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(5), pages 1109-1116, October.
    4. Courty, Pascal, 2003. "Ticket Pricing under Demand Uncertainty," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 46(2), pages 627-652, October.
    5. Gale, Ian L & Holmes, Thomas J, 1993. "Advance-Purchase Discounts and Monopoly Allocation of Capacity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 135-146, March.
    6. Daniel Kahneman & Jack L. Knetsch & Richard H. Thaler, 1991. "Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 193-206, Winter.
    7. Patrick DeGraba, 1995. "Buying Frenzies and Seller-Induced Excess Demand," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(2), pages 331-342, Summer.
    8. Kahneman, Daniel & Knetsch, Jack L & Thaler, Richard, 1986. "Fairness as a Constraint on Profit Seeking: Entitlements in the Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(4), pages 728-741, September.
    9. James D. Dana Jr., 1999. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion Under Demand Uncertainty: The Roles of Costly Capacity and Market Structure," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(4), pages 632-660, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andrew Sweeting, 2008. "Equilibrium Price Dynamics in Perishable Goods Markets: The Case of Secondary Markets for Major League Baseball Tickets," NBER Working Papers 14505, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Marc Möller & Makoto Watanabe, 2016. "Competition in the presence of individual demand uncertainty," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(2), pages 273-292, May.
    3. Andrew Sweeting, 2012. "Dynamic Pricing Behavior in Perishable Goods Markets: Evidence from Secondary Markets for Major League Baseball Tickets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(6), pages 1133-1172.
    4. Phillip Leslie & Alan Sorensen, 2009. "The Welfare Effects of Ticket Resale," NBER Working Papers 15476, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Nocke, Volker & Peitz, Martin & Rosar, Frank, 2011. "Advance-purchase discounts as a price discrimination device," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 141-162, January.
    6. Xuanming Su, 2010. "Optimal Pricing with Speculators and Strategic Consumers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 56(1), pages 25-40, January.
    7. Yao Cui & Izak Duenyas & Özge Şahin, 2014. "Should Event Organizers Prevent Resale of Tickets?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(9), pages 2160-2179, September.
    8. Marc Möller & Makoto Watanabe, 2016. "Market Structure and Advance Selling," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 16-020/VII, Tinbergen Institute.
    9. Connolly, Marie & Krueger, Alan B., 2006. "Rockonomics: The Economics of Popular Music," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 20, pages 667-719, Elsevier.
    10. Antonio Rosato, 2016. "Selling substitute goods to loss-averse consumers: limited availability, bargains, and rip-offs," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 47(3), pages 709-733, August.
    11. Caleb S. Fuller & David S. Lucas, 2017. "Pricing Political Rallies," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 271-278, June.
    12. Akan, Mustafa & Ata, Barış & Dana, James D., 2015. "Revenue management by sequential screening," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PB), pages 728-774.
    13. Vincze, János & Koltay, Gábor, 2009. "Fogyasztói döntések a viselkedési közgazdaságtan szemszögéből [Consumer decisions from the angle of behavioural economics]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(6), pages 495-525.
    14. Courty, Pascal & Pagliero, Mario, 2012. "The Pricing of Art and the Art of Pricing: Pricing Styles in the Concert Industry," CEPR Discussion Papers 8967, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Alderighi, Marco & Nicolini, Marcella & Piga, Claudio A., 2016. "Targeting leisure and business passengers with unsegmented pricing," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 502-512.
    16. X. Wang & Chenhang Zeng, 2016. "A model of advance selling with consumer heterogeneity and limited capacity," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 117(2), pages 137-165, March.
    17. Orbach, Barak Y. & Einav, Liran, 2007. "Uniform prices for differentiated goods: The case of the movie-theater industry," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 129-153.
    18. Volker Nocke & Martin Peitz, 2003. "Monopoly Pricing under Demand Uncertainty: Final Sales versus Introductory ffers," PIER Working Paper Archive 03-002, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    19. Jeong-Yoo Kim, 2002. "Rationing as a Signal," International Journal of Business and Economics, School of Management Development, Feng Chia University, Taichung, Taiwan, vol. 1(2), pages 115-122, August.
    20. Seongman Moon & Makoto Watanabe, 2011. "Refundability and Price: Empirical Analysis on the Airline Industry," Working Papers 1107, Nam Duck-Woo Economic Research Institute, Sogang University (Former Research Institute for Market Economy).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jecper:v:17:y:2003:i:2:p:85-97. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.