Academic

Scalping The Dalai Lama

By Kim Krawiec

 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.

Image source

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 22, 2010 (boomark / email).