Price-Gouging Regulation in Response to Crisis: Causal Effects and Policy Implications – MSI

Working Paper

Price-Gouging Regulation in Response to Crisis: Causal Effects and Policy Implications

Sash Vaid, Hongxian Huang, Fred Feinberg

May 21, 2024

Analyzes data on consumer spending and geolocation data from mobile devices to understand the impact of different price gouging regulations on US consumer purchase behavior during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Topics

research recap

Regulating Pandemic Price Gouging: What Works?

Price gouging regulations by US states during the Covid-19 pandemic were designed to ensure that essential items were accessible and affordable. Contrary to previous lab studies of consumer preference, analyses of sales data demonstrate that limiting official supply chain merchants, not individual third-party sellers, was sufficient to achieve these goals.

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