Via Al
Roth, from The NY Times on Scalping
World Peace, Outside Radio City:
The appearance of the Dalai Lama at Radio City Music Hall has
inspired a certain chant on the Avenue of the Americas.
“Tickets for the Dalai Lama, tickets,” intoned a
not-particularly-spiritual-seeming 55-year-old scalper from Brooklyn, standing
on the corner of 50th Street on Friday afternoon. “Anyone selling tickets?
Tickets.”
As Roth notes, New York’s 2007 ticket scalping law, which
removed price caps on the resale of tickets, expired
last week, leaving a more restrictive law passed in the 1920s in effect.
Apparently, the Dalai Lama’s recent
appearances in Florida were hot events as well, with tickets on eBay and
Craig’s list selling well above their face value (in fact, many of the tickets were complimentary to Florida Atlantic University faculty, students, and staff, so the face value was zero, as seen in the eBay image above). "’It's
disgusting, but there's absolutely nothing I can do,’" said Stacy Volnick,
the FAU official in charge of logistics for the visit.”
Other than the NCAA
as cartel readings, ticket scalping had to be the topic that most engaged my seminar
students this year – I guess that markets in babies, sperm, and human organs
are no competition for these more meaningful events in the lives of students at
schools with major sports programs.
As a completely unrelated aside, I had the pleasure a few
weeks ago of finally meeting Al Roth in person at a matching conference at Fuqua
School of Business, "Roth
and Sotomayor: Twenty Years After," co-sponsored by the Economic
Research Initiatives at Duke (ERID) and the Wallis Institute. (Not the Supreme Court Justice, you Court geeks – my spouse thought I had finally managed an interest in the nation’s highest court, which, as my friends and colleagues know, is one of my least favorite topics). Always a happy coincidence when the
people whose work you admire turn out to also be friendly and generous in person.