TY  - JOUR
AU  - Leslie,Phillip
AU  - Sorensen,Alan
TI  - The Welfare Effects of Ticket Resale
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15476
PY  - 2009
Y2  - November 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15476
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15476.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Phillip Leslie
Anderson School of Management
UCLA
Box 951481
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Tel: 650-387-5498
E-Mail: pleslie@anderson.ucla.edu

Alan T. Sorensen
Department of Economics
University of Wisconsin, Madison
6454 W.H. Sewell Social Science Bldg
1180 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Tel: 608/263-3867
E-Mail: sorensen@ssc.wisc.edu
AB  - We develop an equilibrium model of ticket resale in which buyers' decisions in the primary market, including costly efforts to "arrive early" to buy underpriced tickets, are based on rational expectations of resale market outcomes.  We estimate the parameters of the model using a novel dataset that combines transaction data from both the primary and secondary markets for a sample of major rock concerts.  Our estimates indicate that while resale improves allocative efficiency, half of the welfare gain from reallocation is offset by increases in costly effort in the arrival game and transaction costs in the resale market.
ER  -