The Economics of Scarcity and the UNC-Duke Basketball Game (with Michael Munger)
3/16/20261 hr 6 min
Duke University leaves millions of dollars on the table every year by giving away free tickets to the most sought-after game in college basketball. The bizarre ticket allocation system includes weeks of camping in tents, a 58-question trivia exam, border guards with air horns at 3 AM, and a 50-page student-written constitution with its own appeals court. In this special 20th-anniversary episode, EconTalk's Russ Roberts and returning favorite Michael Munger (appearance #51!) use the legendary Duke-UNC rivalry to explore the fundamental economics question: how do you deal with a world when there isn't enough of something to go around? Along the way, they ask why a university that squeezes students on every other margin, might deliberately forgo a fortune on ticket sales. The answer has everything to do with community, belonging, and the same psychology that bonds fighter pilots and elite military units.
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsRuss Roberts· Host0:00
[on-hold music] Welcome to EconTalk conversations for the curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this episode and find links and other information related to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to two thousand and six. Our email address is mail@econtalk.org. We'd love to hear from you. [on-hold music] Today is January fourth, twenty twenty-six, and my guest today is Michael Munger. This is Mike's fifty-first appearance on EconTalk. He was last here in July of twenty twenty-five talking about capitalism. If all goes as planned, this is airing on March sixteenth, twenty twenty-six, which is twenty years to the day since the first episode of EconTalk. Mike is, of course, averaging almost exactly two and a half appearances a year. That's fifty-one divided by twenty for those of you keeping score at home, which is to say that Mike has made a significant contribution to this program and played a significant role in helping make EconTalk what it is. Thank you, Mike, and welcome back to EconTalk.
Michael Munger· Guest1:27
It is a pleasure on both counts.