By Kevin Ma and Matthew Treiber

This paper explores the secondary resale market for high-end and limited-edition sneakers, specifically analyzing the determinants that affect what value sneakers trade for in the secondary market. While it is common knowledge that the sneaker resale market is a thriving and active secondary market, there is little to no empirical research about what exactly causes such sneakers to sell for exorbitant prices in the resale market. The study utilizes a hedonic pricing approach to investigate the determinants of sneaker resale price. We use a dataset of sneaker resale transactions from the online marketplace StockX between the years of 2016 and 2020 as the basis for our research. After analyzing the results, we have determined that the amount of “hype” that surrounds a sneaker as well as supply scarcity are statistically significant factors when determining the resale price premium a particular sneaker commands in the secondary market. This work adds to the sparse literature on the sneaker resale industry and brings an econometrics-approach to determining the price a given pair of sneakers commands in the resale market.

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Advisors: Professor Kyle Jurado, Professor Michelle Connolly, Professor Grace Kim| JEL Codes: C2, C20, J19