Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Price Gouging Post-Sandy on Craigslist | Essentials

Price Gouging Post-Sandy on Craigslist

The American Fountain, Market Place, Stratford-upon-Avon - Stars and Stripes with American Eagle
The American Fountain, Market Place, Stratford-upon-Avon - Stars and Stripes with American Eagle by ell brown
License (according to Flickr): Attribution License
Excerpt:

The demand for power and emergency-related equipment after superstorm Sandy is causing spiking prices on Craigslist and other markets, despite government warnings and laws prohibiting price gouging. But are such measures a help or do they actually hurt consumers? Mark Perry, professor of economics at the University of Michigan, points out that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's warnings against price gouging have exacerbated the post-disaster marketplace that is already under stress from high demand and low supply. Perry, a scholar with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said there are over 600 listings for generators in North New Jersey on Craigslist, some listed for thousands of dollars when they are often sold for $700 or less. "Anti-price gouging laws are really guaranteed shortage laws," Perry said. "You're preventing the market from working and using the magic of allocating resources, creating shortages. The market is innovative and resilient.

People:

Mark Perry

Overall Sentiment: -0.0332788

Relevance: 0.58641

SentimentQuote
-0.265488"Anti-price gouging laws are really guaranteed shortage laws," Perry said. ...
-0.170821"Anti-price gouging laws are really guaranteed shortage laws," Perry said. "You're preventing the market from working and using the magic of allocating resources, creating shortages. The market is innovative and resilient. The market has gone from stores into Craigslist and now we have this formal marketplace."
Sentiment Stats:
  • Number of Quotes: 2
  • Aggregate Sentiment: -0.436309
  • Mean: -0.2181545
  • Standard Deviation: 0

Gov. Chris Christie

Overall Sentiment: -0.127149

Relevance: 0.24121

Sandy

Overall Sentiment: 0

Relevance: 0.233373

Key:

  • Aggregate Sentiment is meant to be an indicator of an individual's overall sentiment.
  • The Mean is meant to be an indicator of an individual's average comment sentiment.
  • The Standard Deviation, when there are enough quotes, will indicate an individual's consistency of sentiment (i.e. a Standard Deviation of 0 would mean they were very consistent in their sentiment and 1 would mean they were very inconsistent).

Note that quote stats are likely to be meaningless beyond the aggregate score due to the tiny sample size. However, they are always provided just in case you find something useful there.

Additional Info:

Company: Craigslist

Overall Sentiment: 0.0202425

Relevance: 0.853411

StateOrCounty: New Jersey

Overall Sentiment: -0.0556882

Relevance: 0.362866

Disambiguation: Location | PoliticalDistrict | AdministrativeDivision | GovernmentalJurisdiction | USStateReferences:
Site Tags Info
Posted by at
Labels: , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)