Thursday, December 20, 2012

Why Economists Love Price Gouging, And Why It's So Rare | Synopsis

Why Economists Love Price Gouging, And Why It's So Rare

[Grand Grocery Co.], Lincoln, Neb. (LOC)
[Grand Grocery Co.], Lincoln, Neb. (LOC) by The Library of Congress
License (according to Flickr): No known copyright restrictions
Excerpt:

I'm holed up in my Brooklyn apartment right now with my wife and our two young daughters. Even if we lose power and get stuck inside for a few days, we'll be Ok; like millions of other people up and down the East Coast, we stocked up this weekend on peanut butter and crackers and powdered milk and bottled water and cans of beans and tomatoes and tuna. The prices for all those things were the same as they always are. But if the grocery store had doubled or even tripled its usual prices in response to the pre-hurricane rush, we would have bought the food anyway. We needed it, and we didn't have time to shop around. As far as most economists are concerned, it would be totally reasonable for a grocery store to raise prices the day be for a hurricane. In fact, that's what's supposed to happen.

People:

Daniel Kahneman

Overall Sentiment: 0.206662

Relevance: 0.778353

Additional Info:

NaturalDisaster: hurricane

Overall Sentiment: 0.0826279

Relevance: 0.912093

Facility: hardware store

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.787574

GeographicFeature: East Coast

Overall Sentiment: -0.126401

Relevance: 0.52153

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