The Economics of Scarcity and the UNC-Duke Basketball Game (with Michael Munger)

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 March 2026

⏱️ 66 minutes

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Summary

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:07.9	I'm your host, Russ Roberts, of Sholem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:13.8	Go to EconTalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:21.5	You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
0:26.7	Our email address is mail at econTalk.org.
0:30.0	We'd love to hear from you.
0:36.7	Today is January 4th, 2026.
0:40.5	And my guest today is Michael Munger.
0:42.8	This is Mike's 51st appearance on Econ Talk.
0:48.4	He was last year in July of 2025 talking about capitalism.
0:51.8	If all goes as planned, this is airing on March 16th,
0:56.1	2026, which is 20 years to the day since the first episode of e-con talk.
1:04.0	Mike is, of course, averaging almost exactly two and a half appearances a year. That's 51 divided by 20.
1:10.7	For those of you keeping score at home,
1:13.3	which is to say that Mike has made a significant contribution to this program and played a
1:20.2	significant role in helping make Econ Talk what it is. Thank you, Mike, and welcome back to Econ Talk.
1:27.0	It is a pleasure on both counts.
1:29.7	We're going to talk about a number of topics today, emerge in order, the power of prices,
1:34.1	how rationing works, the role of community in our lives, and one of the great rivalies in
1:39.4	college sports, Duke versus UNC. So for people without any background, we're going to have to talk a little
1:47.7	bit about the Duke UNC basketball rivalry. And we're interested. The formal topic today is how
1:55.3	tickets for that game are distributed at Duke versus UNC versus other alternative ways they could be distributed.
	...

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