I sympathize with the Burning Man leaders--any ticket allocation…

I sympathize with the Burning Man leaders--any ticket allocation scheme would probably have resulted in substantial grousing. And it's probably too late this year for them to do anything different. But perhaps in future years, they could move to a variant of a "dutch auction".

Dutch auctions have the following advantages:

1) Everyone pays the same price
2) Everyone has an incentive to reveal how much they truly value a ticket
3) It's simple: you simply enter in the price you're willing to pay/ticket, and how many tickets you want.
4) Everyone knows whether they will have a ticket as soon as the auction ends (so that they can start planning).
5) Most of the value of the ticket goes to BMORG, instead of to ticket resellers (so, more money for big art projects, city beautification, etc.)


Here's a sampling of historical uses of Dutch auctions to allocate goods:

Google IPO shares:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/10/business/for-google-going-dutch-has-its-rewards-and-its-risks.html?scp=3&sq=dutch+auction&st=nyt

Randal Monroe's book tour event tickets:

http://auction-bot.appspot.com/

Bruce Springsteen benefit concert tickets:

http://www.pricingforprofit.com/pricing-strategy-blog/what-do-prices-for-rock-concerts-initial-public.htm

David Friedman has an interesting article about why Dutch auctions
aren't used to price goods more often:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/econ_and_evol_psych/economics_and_evol_psych.html

Chris