error: could not create ‘/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/xlrd’: Permission denied

Try python setup.py install --user

You shouldn’t use sudo as suggested above for two reasons:

1. You’re allowing arbitrary untrusted code off the internet to be run as root
2. Passing the --user flag to python setup.py install will install the package to a user-owned directory. Your normal non-root user won’t be able to access the files installed by sudo pip or sudo python setup.py