IEA Senior Education Fellow Steve Davies has been quoted in The Sunday Times after the U.S. Department of Justice accused Live Nation and Ticketmaster of having ‘anti-competitive’ relationships with concert venues and promoters.

However, Steve argued that high concert prices are not a consequence of market failure but the highly restricted supply compared to demand.

The article said:

“‘The way to explain it is that it’s like houses in Dublin,’ said Stephen Davies, head of education at the Institute of Economic Affairs. ‘The buyers are not just local people who want to live there. It’s global investors who want to buy a house in Donnybrook as a hedge — that’s exactly the same phenomenon’.”

Read the full piece here.