Seller reputation and price gouging: Evidence from the COVID‐19 pandemic
研究了COVID-19大流行初期亚马逊平台上3M口罩和Purell洗手液的价格变化，发现新卖家涨价幅度远高于老卖家，表明卖家声誉能限制价格欺诈的程度。
From mid-January to March 2020, 3M masks sold on Amazon by third party sellers were priced 2.4 times higher than Amazon's 2019 price. However, this price increase was not uniform across sellers. We estimate that when Amazon is stocked out (one of our measures of scarcity) new (entrant) sellers increase price by 178%, whereas the continuing sellers' increase is limited to 56.7%. This is consistent with the idea that seller reputation limits the extent of profitable price gouging. Similar results are obtained for Purell hand sanitizer and for other measures of scarcity. We also explore policy implications of our results.