An economic guide to ticket pricing in the entertainment industry

This paper reviews the literature on ticket pricing in the entertaniment industry. All along, I try to evaluate whether ticket markets outeomes are consistent with theoretical predictions. Overall, the literature provides a good understanding for observed variations in ticket prices. The literature, however, fails to explain situations where prices do not vary. We have but a poor understanding for why prices often do not vary over the run of a show, why more popular shows do not charge more and why most venues are scaled in just a few sections. I also review the empirical literature of price discrimination in ticket, markets. By contrasting the theoretical and the enipirical literatures, the paper identifies a set of promising directions for future research.