Bidding for a Taylor Swift ticket or to cut the line at DisneyWorld? Maybe you’re in a ‘hidden market’

“Today, the concert ticket industry is broken,” a government attorney told jurors at a civil antitrust trial in early March. Ticketmaster and its parent Live Nation Entertainment have monopolized the market, the Department of Justice argued, driving up the prices for everyone.

Leaving the antitrust issues to one side, Judd Kessler sees something else going on: a market being hidden.

If you’ve ever watched a Taylor Swift ticket disappear from your cart at the last second, stared at a frozen Ticketmaster screen...