IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v111y2021i7p2127-51.html

How to Avoid Black Markets for Appointments with Online Booking Systems

Author

Listed:
  • Rustamdjan Hakimov
  • C.-Philipp Heller
  • Dorothea Kübler
  • Morimitsu Kurino

Abstract

Allocating appointment slots is presented as a new application for market design. Online booking systems are commonly used by public authorities to allocate appointments for visa interviews, driver's licenses, passport renewals, etc. We document that black markets for appointments have developed in many parts of the world. Scalpers book the appointments that are offered for free and sell the slots to appointment seekers. We model the existing first-come-first-served booking system and propose an alternative batch system. The batch system collects applications for slots over a certain time period and then randomly allocates slots to applicants. The theory predicts and lab experiments confirm that scalpers profitably book and sell slots under the current system with sufficiently high demand, but that they are not active in the proposed batch system. We discuss practical issues for the implementation of the batch system and its applicability to other markets with scalping.

Suggested Citation

  • Rustamdjan Hakimov & C.-Philipp Heller & Dorothea Kübler & Morimitsu Kurino, 2021. "How to Avoid Black Markets for Appointments with Online Booking Systems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(7), pages 2127-2151, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:111:y:2021:i:7:p:2127-51
    DOI: 10.1257/aer.20191204
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20191204
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E130921V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20191204.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20191204.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aer.20191204?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kim, Jaehong & Li, Mengling & Xu, Menghan, 2025. "Priority search with outside options," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 20(3), July.
    2. Rustamdjan Hakimov & C.-Philipp Heller & Dorothea Kübler & Morimitsu Kurino, 2021. "How to Avoid Black Markets for Appointments with Online Booking Systems," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(7), pages 2127-2151, July.
    3. Nikhil Agarwal & Eric Budish, 2021. "Market Design," NBER Working Papers 29367, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. repec:osf:socarx:y8gh7_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Hakimov, Rustamdjan & Kübler, Dorothea, 2021. "Experiments on centralized school choice and college admissions: a survey," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 24(2), pages 434-488.
    6. Eric Budish & Judd B. Kessler, 2022. "Can Market Participants Report Their Preferences Accurately (Enough)?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 1107-1130, February.
    7. Dorothea Kübler, 2021. "Marktdesign und die Verteilung von Impfstoff," Wirtschaftsdienst, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 101(8), pages 597-600, August.
    8. Laura Derksen & Jason T Kerwin & Natalia Ordaz Reynoso & Olivier Sterck, 2025. "Healthcare Appointments as Commitment Devices," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 135(665), pages 81-118.
    9. Laura Derksen & Jason. T Kerwin & Natalia Ordaz Reynoso & Olivier Sterck, 2021. "Appointments: A More Effective Commitment Device for Health Behaviors," CSAE Working Paper Series 2021-13, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    10. Lingbo Huang & Tracy Xiao Liu & Jun Zhang, 2023. "Born to wait? A study on allocation rules in booking systems," Discussion Papers 2023-04, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    11. Atayev, Atabek & Caspari, Gian & Hillenbrand, Adrian & Klein, Thilo, 2023. "Tapping into people's impatience for better environmental subsidies," ZEW policy briefs 04/2023, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D47 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Market Design

    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:aecrev:v:111:y:2021:i:7:p:2127-51. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.