{"id":26822,"date":"2015-06-24T01:00:05","date_gmt":"2015-06-24T05:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26822"},"modified":"2021-03-07T13:03:48","modified_gmt":"2021-03-07T18:03:48","slug":"qotd-surge-pricing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/06\/24\/qotd-surge-pricing\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Surge pricing"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>New York <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/blogs\/moneybox\/2014\/07\/08\/uber_price_gouging_not_during_emergencies_in_new_york.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">just killed<\/a> every economist\u2019s favorite thing about Uber: surge pricing. Sure, many economists also love convenient car service at the touch of a button. But black-car services have been around for a long time. Explicit surge pricing &mdash; which both creates new supply and rations demand &mdash; has not, but it\u2019s long been a core feature of Uber Technologies Inc.\u2019s business model. While it can be annoying at times (during a recent rainstorm, I noticed a sudden epidemic of drivers canceling rides, which I suspect was due to the rapidly rising surge price), it also allows you to be sure that you will be able to get a taxi on New Year\u2019s Eve or during a rainstorm as long as you\u2019re willing to pay extra.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, no one else loves surge pricing as much as economists do. Instead of getting all excited about the subtle, elegant machinery of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.econlib.org\/library\/Essays\/hykKnw1.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">price discovery<\/a>, people get all outraged about \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloombergview.com\/articles\/2013-12-19\/uber-s-pricing-puts-economists-before-customers\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">price gouging<\/a>.\u201d No matter how earnestly economists and their fellow travelers explain that this is irrational madness &mdash; that price gouging actually makes everyone better off by ensuring greater supply and allocating the supply to (approximately) those with the greatest demand &mdash; the rest of the country continues to view marking up generators after a hurricane, or similar maneuvers, as a pretty serious moral crime. <\/p>\n<p>Megan McArdle, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloombergview.com\/articles\/2014-07-09\/uber-makes-economists-sad\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Uber Makes Economists Sad&#8221;, <em>Bloomberg View<\/em><\/a>, 2014-07-09.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New York just killed every economist\u2019s favorite thing about Uber: surge pricing. Sure, many economists also love convenient car service at the touch of a button. But black-car services have been around for a long time. Explicit surge pricing &mdash; which both creates new supply and rations demand &mdash; has not, but it\u2019s long been [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,25,41],"tags":[111,1410,321,661,202],"class_list":["post-26822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","category-quotations","tag-cars","tag-gigeconomy","tag-nyc","tag-regulation","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6YC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26822"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64513,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26822\/revisions\/64513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}