Why?

Fixed! I was missing a comma.

Interesting! That Boston Public Schools switched from this mechanism to Gale-Shapley seems like it might be useful in convincing our school board (which is separate from the BPS school board, since schools are municipality-level here) to switch.

Their definition of "Price gouging occurs in a competitive market when lowering the price from the market-clearing level would increase total Utilitarian welfare" is a bit sneaky: it means that any time I say "here's an example of where price gouging helps improve disaster response" they can just say "but that's not real price gouging, since a lower price wouldn't increase welfare".

It also doesn't look to me like the paper's approach gives a good framework for thinking about long-term investment incentives and preparation for future disasters, or people selling/renting possessions they wouldn't normally put on the market sell (air purifiers, renting spare rooms).

The paper's division of circumstances into price gouging vs not isn't a good match for the real world, and leads them to support policies like the current ones that normally don't do anything and then suddenly make large impacts in a disaster. Instead I'd like to see recognition that it's hard to determine welfare-maximizing pricing in real time and that price signals can reach very far, and instead use a mechanism that allows price increases to occur but redistributes some of the profits.

I think you might find the pushback in the FB comments even more illustrative. Including one where a commenter doesn't want the new construction because it could lure NIMBYs to move in.

Other side of the room, about ten feet from the stove. Same place each time, yes.

I had seen ideas along these lines, and I wish I had remembered this before shaving my beard off!

I'd be happy to give you good odds on, conditional on this policy being enacted, it not expanding to comprise more than 0.1% of total US taxation.

I don't trust my measurements as much in the stubble case, because of the risk of particles leaking into the bag through its exit. So presenting the other cases as relative to stubble risks compounding error.

If the relevant counterfactual is not masking, then I think I'm giving these reductions the right way around?

This was one of the places where I really disliked her campaigning was doing (even though I preferred her overall). The basic proposal (though they were vague) was to make a federal law that would act similarly to the various existing state laws, but then she campaigned as if it would do something about current grocery prices. Which doesn't make sense: the grocery price changes really don't look like they're covered by any of the state laws, and a law that did cover them would be a huge (and quite bad) change.

Is your model that what's covered by "price gouging" would end up expanding if a proposal like mine were implemented?