Cannabis prices on the dark web

Jakub Cerveny and Jan C. van Ours

European Economic Review, 2019, vol. 120, issue C

Abstract: This paper examines prices of cannabis sold over the anonymous internet marketplace AlphaBay. We analyze cannabis prices of 500 listings from about 140 sellers, originating from 18 countries. We find that both listing characteristics and country characteristics matter. Cannabis prices are lower if sold in larger quantities, so there is a clear quantity discount. Cannabis prices increase with perceived quality. Cannabis prices are also higher when the seller is from a country with a higher GDP per capita or higher electricity prices. The internet based cannabis market seems to be characterized by monopolistic competition where many sellers offer differentiated products with quality variation causing a dispersion of cannabis prices and sellers have some control over the cannabis prices.

Keywords: Cannabis prices; Dark Web (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D43 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292119301588
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Cannabis Prices on the Dark Web (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:120:y:2019:i:c:s0014292119301588

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2019.103306

Access Statistics for this article

European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer

More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().