Coverage of retail stores and discrete choice models of demand: Estimating price elasticities and welfare effects

B-Tier
Journal: International Journal of Industrial Organization
Year: 2010
Volume: 28
Issue: 5
Pages: 555-578

Score contribution per author:

0.670 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Consumers' choice set of products within stores can be limited. Ackerberg and Rysman (2005) address this problem by modeling unobserved consumer preferences over products and retail stores, leading to augmented demand specifications. Having Carbonated Soft Drink product level data, where we observe products' store coverage, we are able to estimate their logit, nested logit and random coefficient logit specifications of demand in a structural model of equilibrium. Allowing for store coverage turns out to have a very significant impact on the estimated structural parameters and on the predictive power of the model. Taking these estimated structural parameters we perform a counterfactual whereby stores carry all products in the market. We find systematic increases in price elasticities and welfare in our new equilibrium. Competition in markets is more curtailed than normally assumed in structural models of industries.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:indorg:v:28:y:2010:i:5:p:555-578
Journal Field
Industrial Organization
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-29