Collaborative Research: Estimation and computation of dynamic oligopoly and network effects models

该项目调查消费电子市场的新耐用品，如DVD播放机，数码摄像机和数码相机。这些市场的消费者往往会推迟购买，因为他们预计未来价格会下降，质量会提高，而企业通常会根据这种行为的存在来制定定价策略。我们研究这些市场的不同重要特征，以评估它们对经济表现和政策的影响。首先，我们研究了我们通常在这些市场中观察到的价格大幅下跌的来源。以数码摄像机和数码相机市场为重点，我们试图确定这些下降在多大程度上是由于供应商的战略定价，新竞争对手的进入和外源成本下降。我们通过估计成本的决定因素并使用估计值来计算反事实环境下的定价行为（例如随着时间的推移稳定的产品组合）来执行此分析。其次，我们研究互补商品市场如何演变和创造网络效应。我们对DVD市场的成功特别感兴趣，这需要生产和销售DVD播放机和DVD标题。我们确定的DVD标题的DVD标准的主导地位的贡献，解决了几个计量经济学问题，并没有很好地解决在以前的相关文献。我们的研究结果对这些市场的反垄断和监管政策，相关价格指数的构建，以及营销和管理中的相关问题产生了影响。我们的研究也是相关的其他研究人员估计动态需求系统，研究耐用品市场或研究寡头垄断的相互作用。解决消费者需求和寡头垄断供应的动态模型是复杂的，因此，我们的解决方案是新的和计算密集型的，是独立的研究人员和分析师的兴趣。与我们过去的项目一样，我们将涉及大量的研究生和本科生，培训他们应用建模，数值技术和并行计算机的使用，以及更普遍的良好的研究实践。

This project investigates consumer electronics markets for new durable goods such as DVD players, digital camcorders and digital cameras. Consumers in these markets often delay purchases in anticipation of future price decreases and quality increases while firms typically base their pricing strategies on the knowledge that this behavior exists. We study different important features of these markets to evaluate their implications for economic performance and policy. First, we examine the sources of the dramatic price declines that we typically observe in these markets. Focusing on digital camcorder and digital camera markets, we seek to determine the extent to which these declines are due to strategic pricing by suppliers, entry by new competitors, and exogenous cost declines. We perform this analysis by estimating the determinants of cost and using the estimates to compute pricing behavior under counterfactual environments such as a stable product mix over time. Second, we study how complementary goods markets evolve and create network effects. We are particularly interested in the success of the DVD market, which required production and sales of both DVD players and DVD titles. We identify the contribution of DVD titles to the dominance of the DVD standard, solving several econometric issues that have not been well-addressed in the relevant previous literature. Our results bear on antitrust and regulatory policy towards these markets, the construction of relevant price indices, and related issues in marketing and management. Our research is also relevant for other researchers who estimate dynamic demand systems, study durable goods markets or study oligopoly interactions. Solving dynamic models of consumer demand and oligopoly supply is complex and, as a result, our solution methods are new and computationally intensive, and are of independent interest to researchers and analysts. As with our past projects, we will involve a large number of graduate and undergraduate students, training them in applied modeling, numerical techniques and parallel computer use, as well as more generally in good research practices.