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Price Gouging In A Pandemic, Christopher Buccafusco, Daniel Hemel, Eric L. Talley
Price Gouging In A Pandemic, Christopher Buccafusco, Daniel Hemel, Eric L. Talley
Faculty Scholarship
The COVID-19 pandemic led to acute supply shortages across the country as well as concerns over price increases amid surging demand. In the process, it reawakened a debate about whether and how to regulate “price gouging” — a controversy that continues as inflation has accelerated even as the pandemic abates. Animating this debate is a longstanding conflict between laissez-faire economics, which champions price fluctuations as a means to allocate scarce goods, and perceived norms of consumer fairness, which are thought to cut strongly against sharp price hikes amid shortages.
This Article provides a new, empirically grounded perspective on the price …