Essays In Industrial Organization

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Date

2019-09-18

Authors

Wood, Nicholas

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

University of Oregon

Abstract

I investigate the effect to which consumer heterogeneity impacts varying markets. I find that it has a substantial effect all the markets that I consider. In the US automobile industry, we model demand for the durable goods using a dynamic model. We expand upon the current literature by allow households the flexibility to select between different classes of vehicles. In further analysis, I develop a method to incorporate microlevel data into the analysis of the automobile industry. I show that, with this approach, national policy can be targeted at specific groups and regions of the populous. For policies considering the automobile industry, I consider the Cars Allowance Rebate System to evaluate policy effects. Finally, I consider the boom of the U.S. smartphone industry. Using a random coefficients estimator, I find that ignoring consumer specific effects would cause the researcher to drastically misestimate gains, and therefor implement poor policy, in the industry.

Description

Keywords

Cash for Clunkers, Cellphones, Consumer Expenditure Survey, Machine Learning, Structural Modeling, Vertical Product Differentiation

Citation